David Porter's letter in arq 5/1 was timely. In recognizing the benefits to be gained from the ‘two-way street’ that connects architectural education and practice, Porter follows on from Robin Webster's plea in arq 4/2 for ‘ordinary’ practitioners to teach ‘a high standard of ordinariness’. Webster's letter was provoked by Dean Hawkes' paper, ‘The architect and the academy’ (arq 4/1), in which he quoted Kahn, Zumthor and Scarpa on education, all regarding teaching as a process of (self) discovery.

Architect-led large-scale public housing schemes were common in the United Kingdom from 1946 right up to 1981. However, over the last twenty years, there has been little significant architectural input into the private sector's large housing developments. Buschow Henley's competition-winning entry for St. Mary's Island (arq 5/3) is therefore one of the first schemes of its kind — and of particular interest to an older generation of architects who virtually specialized in housing. In this short review, BILL UNGLESS who, with his partner, Michael Neylan, was responsible for some of the most humane and successful housing projects of the 1960s and '70s, appraises the St. Mary's Island scheme.

The three modest house projects described here are by three fellow travellers — the two authors and David Lea — interested in the Organic side of Modernism. Conversational partners who have worked together in various capacities over many years, they share a common conviction about ‘working with the given’ (pp.305—311).

Engineer-designed structures often attract the admiration of architects. The work of Freyssinet and Maillart and, more recently, Rice and Calatrava has been admired in this way. Few of these engineers have written about their work – but Freyssinet did, with great eloquence. Here, Andrew Saint introduces his translation of a particularly revealing essay by the great French engineer.

In this essay the author suggests that although the resulting architectural style may be ambiguous, a dialogue with an existing place can be creative, rewarding and appropriate. Just how this might be so is demonstrated in the following article, ‘New meanings from old buildings’, on p.312—331.

‘Linking practice with research’ is both our cover slogan and our objective. arq covers the broad spectrum of architectural endeavour – which comes together in design and buildings – and publishes contributions from both academics and practitioners. Take this issue.

First, it covers and considers architectural research in many forms and ways. There's Rem Koolhaas' research on shopping; a pioneering application of a passive environmental system; a competition-winning scheme for new housing; an account of a completely unknown project by Le Corbusier; and an introduction to an alternative to air-conditioning in hot, dry climates. There's also a timely look back towards the beginnings of university-based architectural research in the 1960s; the first English translation of Freyssinet's remarkable essay on the sublime; and a review of Zaha Hadid's recent work and its theoretical base.

Second, each of this broad spread of topics is design and practice-related. Most of the authors have academic affiliations but seven are also architects in practice and one is a practising engineer. Just two are architectural historians. Two of the articles – those on the design of the Jersey Archive and on passive downdraught evaporative cooling are interdisciplinary and based on considerations of sustainability. Our letters pages reveal a bias towards practice – but, although all our correspondents are practising architects or engineers, most have strong connections with academia.

But this issue takes things a step further: it is the very first arq to carry an article directly based on an architect's drawings and design report – rather than on a piece especially written for publication. ‘From table to basin: St Mary's Island’ (pp. 229–247) is a lightly edited version of a competition-winning entry for a large ‘brownfield’ site in South-East England. For many years, there have been very few competitions of this kind. The Editors felt that Buschow Henley's scheme deserved more coverage than it had enjoyed in the professional press. Our referees agreed and made just one recommendation – that the architects should write a short introduction outlining their theoretical position.

In our second issue, in the middle of a lively debate then being conducted in our pages (arq 1/1 and 2), Philip Tabor wrote a leader entitled ‘Design is research: is it?’ He asked whether ‘a design submission, entirely drawn and unaccompanied by text, would be awarded a research degree in architecture? Or, closer to home, would arq’s editor and referees, accept it for publication?’ The answer he concluded, was ‘Probably not.’ Six years on, ‘From table to basin’ represents a shift in editorial policy and a demonstration of the way in which designers can reflect upon their work as research in a way that journalists cannot.

Paolo Tombesi sets out a very interesting thesis that Asia will become the ‘back office’ of Western design practice in, ‘A true south for design? The new international division of labour in architecture’ (arq 5/2, pp.171–180). There are many instances of this happening already, though mainly in engineering and in US style architectural practice where documentation consists of the application of rules-based methods and the work used to be done by ‘tracers’. Practices with computer-based standard detailing can have schematic drawings worked up overnight and corrections similarly serviced. UK architectural practice is largely done without back offices or standard solutions and drafting help must be closely supervised. Price competition from the South may well become a factor for change.

On studying the latest monograph dedicated to recent work by the Office of Zaha Hadid (OZH) – El Croquis No.103: ‘Zaha Hadid 1996–2001’ – one enjoys two distinct sensations: awe and pleasure. Truly remarkable in both number and quality, this collection of sophisticated, poised and delicate projects – some recently realized, others imminent – demonstrates syntheses more sizable and more programmatically challenging than those of the previous 15-year period. Indeed, in conversation with Architectural Association Chairman Mohsen Mostafavi, Hadid offers that ‘a new degree of complexity has been entered’.

As Mostafavi notes, the conceptual theme evident in recent work is that of geology. The genealogy of this theme can be read in early seminal works like the Hong Kong Peak Project of 1983, where planarity and spatial compression combined with sculptural tactics, like the carving of existing landscape, to produce public spaces within a newly animated topography. But Hadid comments that more recent projects have tended to another strain of the geological thematic: the volumetric.

Max Fordham's perceptive comments (letters, arq 5/3) raise many interesting points on building physics and the environmental performance of buildings. Our article (arq 5/1) summarizes a research project that environmentally analyzed trends in Danish housing design. The results showed that the typical design strategies advocated by ‘traditional’ low-energy and passive housing design methods (large glass areas and heavy thermal mass) are not necessarily the most optimal. Such strategies only take account of the heating demand and do not use modern life-cycle analysis methodologies where the environmental impact of the building materials is also integrated.

When given the opportunity to re-read Leslie Martin's article, ‘The grid as generator’ (arq 4/4), and the letters that it attracted (arq 5/1), I found myself moving in two levels: the archaeology of the Cambridge School of Architecture, and the problems of urban design.

About five years ago I decided that I wanted to write a textbook on building construction. At that time it seemed like a straightforward, if lengthy, task of setting out the essential issues in the construction of buildings to a readership of architecture students and young practitioners. It would consist of information that I had regularly discussed and sketched with colleagues I had worked with over the years.

In talking to possible publishers, I put across to them a case explaining how I thought the book would fill a gap in the market, and who would read it. I felt at the time of starting the project that it would be of benefit to students to show some of the possible developments for future construction, as well as construction techniques from other industries from which architects like to draw inspiration. I wanted to include aircraft, yachts, oil production platforms and ski lifts as well as environmental issues such as the recycling of building materials and embodied energy. However, as the text developed I felt it would be more valuable for a reader to have a more focused book, without too much crusading for environmental issues or dreaming about other structures. I thought that it would do the book a disservice in the long run by appearing too quirky, and instead aimed for a balance of hard fact and inspiring images.

While a number of apparently competing theories have come to dominate the architecture schools, they have many assumptions and formal conventions in common. The Miami architect and urban designer Andres Duany gives his view of this.

Andres Duany's essay ‘Ad majorem gloria me: order out of the chaos of architectural education’ (Perspective 1, p. 105) will evoke both wry smiles and cries of outrage. Although written with the North American scene in mind it refers to a fairly widespread phenomenon — the grooming of architecture students ‘for the position of Next Mediated Genius … or bust’. It is by no means a universal condition even in North America but it is common enough to cause considerable concern on the part of those who want both a strong profession and better buildings and places — the subject of Robert Gutman's ‘Critical issues for architectural practice’ (Perpective 2, p. 107).

In his critique, Gutman reviews the first two publications sponsored by RIBA Future Studies — an admirable venture set up two years ago to stimulate radical thinking on strategic architectural issues. He is critical of both publications, feeling that they do not address the crucial issues facing architectural practice. In particular, he takes issue with the emphasis on ‘flagship buildings’, questioning their often unimpressive long-term performance. Such a focus on monuments like Gehry's Bilbao and Foster's Reichstag tends to inhibit debate on other, more prosaic but common buildings.

The subject matter of the first of our two Design pieces, Hans van der Heijden's ‘The diagram of the house’ (p. 110) is of far greater relevance to society than any flagship building. The author and his colleagues at BIQ Architecten seem a million miles away from many of their better publicised peers in the Netherlands. Working on the renovation of problematic post-war housing estates and on the creation of new housing communities on both almost featureless sites and in well established urban areas, they collaborate closely with contractors and, in their designs, embrace the ordinary. This is not ‘fashionable’ work, but it is immensely impressive for its integrity, its spatial control and its low-key innovation.

Now take a look at Paolo Tombesi's paper ‘A true south for design? The new international division of labour in architecture’ in the Practice section (p. 171). Pointing to the sharp wage differentials between architects in the developed and developing regions, he suggests that, in a few years, most architectural work will be documented in places such as South-East Asia. Where does this leave the many thousands of young people — Duany's Next Mediated Geniuses — undergoing architectural education in the more privileged parts of the world? And what are the implications for professional institutes obsessed by flagship buildings?

The time has surely come for a more modest and vastly more intelligent approach to architectural education and the needs of society in the developed world.