I have had the honour to write and lecture on a number of occasions about Leslie Martin's work and buildings but the excellent reviews and commentaries you published in your previous issue (arq 4/4) moved me to wish to relate an incident from his teaching which sheds much light.

In this conversation with Rem Koolhaas, arq probes some of the issues raised by his research into shopping, the subject of his latest book, The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. He argues that architects have largely ignored this dominant form of urban activity, which has prohibited us from having an effect on its quality. Maintaining a critical but open-minded position, he offers insights of value to every architect.

Does Giles Oliver (letters, arq 5/3) mean to connect the success of the Tate Modern in ‘sucking in huge crowds’ with the success of architectural education? Both in his view seem suspect achievements. The Tate is not proper architecture — it is too brutish and poorly lit — while current architectural education avoids all that is proper to architecture. His message is that both public and consumer opinion counteth for nought in these matters. But what else have professionals ever said? Particularly the generations brought up to believe that unpopularity was architecture's native condition. Frankly I am rather encouraged by the popularity of supposedly arcane subjects like modern art, modern architecture and architectural education. At least we seem to be getting one thing right. Not that I am advocating complacency. Keeping anything alive in our management sodden culture is tricky, particularly the kind of creative team spirit required to make projects work.

Architectural Practice: a critical view,Gutman, R., Architectural Practice: a critical view, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton, 1988, 160pp., ISBN 0-910413-45-2, price $12.95 £7.95 (pb). Robert Gutman's seminal survey of the architectural profession, was published 13 years ago. In it, he discussed the changes that were occurring within architecture and the building industry. Although based largely on the American experience, it both echoed and foreshadowed changes elsewhere.

In his concluding paragraph, Gutman wrote: ‘To deal with the challenges in coming decades, the adoption of ingenious management techniques by individual offices or the use of clever public relations programs by the architectural community, is unlikely to prove sufficient. Intensive research, thought and policy initiatives focusing on these challenges are needed … Architecture is too important to the quality of American life for us to assume that the knowledge of architects working alone is adequate to address it … [Other interested] groups must be involved … Only if joint programs with this scope and on this scale are undertaken, is the profession likely to formulate persuasive policies that will assure the independence of architectural practice in future years.’

The RIBA Future Studies Group was established in 1999 to stimulate radical thinking on strategic architectural issues. It has close links with a number of other organizations and research institutions. It describes its purpose as ‘to improve the quality of architecture through the initiation, commissioning and dissemination of research studies … intended to inform the climate within which architects work …’ Full details of the group can be found at

www.site.yahoo.net/future-studies/purandin.html

Last year, Future Studies published its first two studies. Robert Gutman reviewed them for arq.

The celebration of Leslie Martin's life and work in arq 4/4 has provoked a steady stream of correspondence about the nature and quality of his contributions to architectural practice, education and research. However, so far absent from this debate has been the voice of any of those who worked in Martin's Shelford studio. Spurred by the issue of the relation of practice to (academic) research, PATRICK HODGKINSON, Martin's first assistant, reflects on some of the projects with which he was involved. This most revealing contribution to the debate raises the whole issue of the nature of architectural research.

Although I was generously given the opportunity to make an extended contribution to arq's tribute to Leslie Martin (arq 4/4), I hope I may be allowed to respond to your republication of Martin's important essay, ‘The Grid as Generator’ and to Peter Hall's introduction to it.

The growth of formalized research has been one of the most important developments in architectural education in the last half-century. It is now axiomatic that most, if not all, faculty members in schools of architecture will undertake some measure of research. In this the academic architect stands alongside, and is indistinguishable from, colleagues in the other disciplines. But in the middle decades of the last century the case for the development of a research culture in architecture was not so clear cut. Two of the central figures in the debate about the establishment of research were Serge Chermayeff in the United States and Leslie Martin in the United Kingdom. DEAN HAWKES compares and contrasts their pioneering work.

‘Does everything that does not impress us strike us as unimpressive? And does the ordinary always impress us as being ordinary?’ asked Wittgenstein in his Philosophical InvestigationsThe translation given by GEM Anscombe in the English edition reads: ‘Does everything that we do not find conspicuous make an impression of inconspicuousness? Does what is ordinary always make the impression of ordinariness?’. This article explores his questions through four built projects where the architects faced the apparent contradiction of inventing the everyday. The projects reflect an interest in construction with an ornamental quality in the classical sense of the word: a link between the building typology and its material appearance. The structure constitutes ‘an honest diagram’. The author was one of the lead architects for the buildings.

Kieran Timberlake Architects have demonstrated in a series of built projects the constructive logic of architecture and the ability of buildings to alter our perception of a site. Their work exemplifies a respect for materials and assemblies and an interest in the idea of ‘instauration’, which views a place as one of continuous inhabitation. In an era in which architects often try to express non-architectural ideas through their buildings, KTA's return to the expressive power of construction and materials, of sensitive siting and understated form comes as a welcome change.

The new Jersey Archive is superbly designed and beautifully crafted. It is also one of the largest repositories in the world to use a passive environmental control system. Here, one of the architects, David Prichard, describes the design and its development and the services engineer, Chris Twinn, concludes with an account of the physics behind the building design.

Your decision to reprint Leslie Martin's 1972 paper ‘The Grid as Generator’ (arq 4/4) was apposite. It provided intellectual reconciliation between two schools of planning theory: the art of civic design and the science of empirical analysis of the use of land. After more than two decades out of favour (during which systems theory and an interest in the process of planning rather than its product were the vogue) both schools of planning are again in the ascendancy.

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 last issue of arq (4/4) contained a celebration of the life and work of Leslie Martin, who died last July. Jørn Utzon, Richard Rogers, Manuel de Sola Morales, Lionel March and many others each wrote of Martin's singular contributions to architecture – in practice, education and research. To these we now add one further appreciation – by Kenneth Frampton.

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.

This is a translation of the inaugural lecture Asplund gave as Professor of Architecture at Stockholm's Tekniska Högskolan in 1931.E. G. Asplund. ‘Var arkitektoniska rumsuppfattning’, Byggmästeren: Arkitektupplagan 1931, pp.203—210. There is a photograph of Asplund giving this talk, in Christina Engfors' book E. G. Asplund: arkitekt, Arkitektur Forlag, Stockholm, 1990, p.69. Asplund used the opportunity to affirm his support for the ‘new conception of space’ in contemporary architecture. His acknowledgement of the influence of Le Corbusier is expected; but the emphasis on Spengler's The Decline of the West,Oswald Spengler. Der Untergang des Abendlandes, (Vol.1) Gestalt und Wirklichkeit (1918), (Vol.2) Welthistorische Perspektiven (1922), C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munchen, translated by C. F. Atkinson as The Decline of the West, (Vol.1) Form and Actuality (1926), (Vol.2) Perspectives of World-History (1928), George Allen & Unwin, London.Spengler's ‘theory of historical cycles’ was broadly dismissed as unsound by contemporary academic historians (cf. R. G. Collingwood — ‘Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles’, in Antiquity, 1927), but his use of the generic spatial organizations evident in architectures of the past, as evidence of the ‘culture souls’ of the civilizations that produced them, retains interest from an architect's point of view. and to its identification of ‘infinite space’ as the ‘prime symbol’ of Western culture, suggests that maybe Spengler's work had more influence on architects in Europe during the 1920s than is generally recognized.

The urgent need for new housing in south-east England is likely to be met by development on what are often ‘brownfield’ sites. Buschow Henley's scheme was the winning entry for an ideas competition to stimulate new ideas leading to the exemplary development of such a site. With the exception of the opening statement and the competition background, this is a much shortened version of the original submission.

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.

Research by Design was the title of an international conference held at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology in early November 2000. It set out to explore new ways of thinking in architectural research and its relation to design education and practice. The academic debate was complemented by presentations of high-profile international projects that were discussed from a methodological point of view. Graeme Hutton and Charles Rattray report.

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).

Buckminster Fuller's work has traditionally been divided into the early ‘Dymaxion’ projects, and the later ‘geodesics’. This paper focuses on the 1942 Dymaxion Map as a connection between these careers. The Map was an innovation, substituting local projections for a ‘global’ one. Visualizing the earth's surface as a series of facets, connected by ‘great circles’, he approached the ideal of an interdependent, spherical system of tension and compression. The military development of geodesics suggests interplay between the geometry of the geodesic skin and its potential as a metaphor for global action.