With the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise looming, we make no apologies for publishing a further exploration of the nature of architectural research. In her paper (pp141–147), Jane Rendell makes a lucid and persuasive case that design is a complex interdisciplinary activity that sits uneasily within current definitions of research. For Rendell, architectural design, just as much as writing, can be practised as a form of criticism, a proposition that was explored at ‘Critical Architecture’, the recent conference at the Bartlett School in London (pp105–108).