For the office ranking, publications made within the previous 24 months are taken into account. The evaluation includes the printed main issues of each magazine.

The national ranking lists are based on evaluation of six German (Bauwelt, Detail) and six international professional journals (Architectural Review, a+u, architektur aktuell, Werk Bauen und Wohnen, domus).

The international and D/A/CH ranking lists are based on evaluation of two German (Bauwelt, Detail) and six international professional journals (Architectural Review, a+u, architektur aktuell, Werk Bauen und Wohnen, domus).

The landscape architects ranking lists are based on evaluation of three German (Bauwelt, Wettbewerbe Aktuell, Baumeister) and three international professional journals (architektur aktuell, Werk Bauen und Garten+Landschaft). Included are projects in which landscape architects have participated.

In addition to a total ranking list of the architectural offices resident in Germany, we also calculate regional lists for the German federal states, which have been pooled into seven regions.

Furthermore, we create lists from selected fields of reference (e.g. urban planning, house building, schools and universities). These lists will be gradually extended and differentiated. The registered architectural offices will be included in the lists according to their respective main locations.

The city list for the quality of architecture is a special feature. Published contributions to the competition as well as completed projects are registered separately, considering contributions from offices not resident in Germany.

The professional journals will be evaluated on basis of the following rules

• Registration of the illustrated editorial contributions and documentations on architectural and urbanistic works (not older than 10 years)
• Listing based on journal numbers, object description, object location, subject nummer, architectural office, office location, number of pages of the report
• Conversion of the number of pages into points according to the following key:

  note, illustrated note	1 page	= 1 point
  short presentation	2 pages	= 2 points
  small report	3– 4 pages	= 3 points
  report	5– 7 pages	= 4 points
  large report	8 pages or more	= 5 points

• Determinaton of the final score by means of a compensation factor according to the density of exploitable information of the journals. This multiplication factor is as follows:

  a+u, Wettbewerbe Aktuell	Factor 1
  Bauwelt, Baumeister, DBZ, db, Detail	Factor 2
  Architectural Review, domus, Werk Bauen und Wohnen, architektur.aktuell	Factor 3

• Addition of the achieved points and sorting of the offices (or cities, respectively) into ranking lists according to the achieved total points. The lists are updated regularly.