‘Which way up?’ and ‘What size?’ are recurring questions when viewing the artworks of Tom Ellis. Devices of reflection and re-scaling are extracted from an architectural context and employed with quirky irreverence in this exhibition of models, drawings and ready-mades. Even before his collaboration with architects for this latest show, Tom Ellis' work has shown a fascination with imagined places and structures. Earlier pieces construct, in cheap, clumsy materials, the inaccessible landscapes viewed from a plane window or the envisaged destination of a journey. His explorations of the perceptual effects of scale are sometimes jokey, sometimes profound, but always refreshing and unpretentious.

The architects of the Modern Movement in the late 1920s found new sources of form through the pursuit of technical and functional issues in design. They sought shaping agents in functional organization, in the admission of light, in efficiency of structure and construction, and many other physical issues of this kind. At the same time, they felt the need to escape from traditional rules of architectural composition involving Classical orders of columns, symmetry and axes. They were ready to discover a new and surprising identity for buildings precisely to defy the historicist conventions that until then dominated architecture as a cultural tradition. Acoustics is an area in which many interesting claims were made, and some famous Modernist designs were supposedly formed, or at very least inspired, by acoustic forces. These historical instances beg the question whether acoustics is really a legitimate and helpful formal determinant of buildings. Perhaps instead, the acoustic arguments put forward by architects to justify their formal choices were just convenient alibis. This is a far more complex issue than at first it seems.

‘I hope I may be forgiven, if I make some faint Application of what I say of Blenheim, to the Small Remains of ancient Woodstock Manour… it was rais'd by One of the Bravest and most Warlike of the English Kings; And tho' it has not been Fam'd, as a Monument of his Arms, it has been tenderly regarded as the Scene of his Affections. Nor amongst the Multitude of People who come daily to View what is raising to the Memory of the Great Battle of Blenheim; Are there any that do not run eagerly to See what Ancient Remains are to be found of Rosamonds Bower… But if the Historicall Argument Stands in need of Assistance; there is Still much to be said on Other Considerations. That Part of the Park which is Seen from the North Front of the New Building, has Little Variety of Objects Nor dos the Country beyond it Afford any of Vallue, It therefore Stands in Need of all the helps that can be given… So that all the Building left, (which is only the Habitable Part and the Chappel) might Appear in Two Risings amongst ‘em, it wou'd make One of the Most Agreable Objects that the best of Landskip Painters can invent’ (Dobrée & Webb, 1928d; Ridgway & Williams, 2000).

Jonathan Woolf studied architecture at Kingston, and worked with Munkenbeck and Marshall before setting up in practice in 1990. He taught at the AA with Philippe Barthelemy, from 1995 to 2000, where their Intermediate Unit 5 made a number of proposals related to Hampstead Heath in north London and explored them using solid wood models. We met at his new office – a converted pub – and, over a beer from the fridge, discussed his latest completed building, Brick Leaf House. It is a 10,000 square foot double villa built for two brothers and their families on the edge of Hampstead Heath. We began by looking at the sort of model his AA unit would have produced.

Geoffrey Bawa died in May, so it is fitting as well as poignant that Thames and Hudson have published this new and lavish edition on his life's work, written by the indefatigable David Robson. It will undoubtedly prove to be the definitive publication. Interest in Bawa's work is clearly very high; the previous monograph by Brian Brace Taylor published in 1986, was revised and republished in 1995 by the same publisher. Robson's new work is more comprehensive and includes the very latest projects. It also sets the scene both in terms of Bawa's unusual career and life story and of the awesome legacy of his home, the fascinating island of Sri Lanka.

Notwithstanding contributions such as those articulated in Kenneth Frampton's Studies in Tectonic Culture (MIT Press, 1995), few authors have furthered a clear discourse concerning the relationships between construction techniques and formal ideas in architecture subsequent to the late twentieth-century critiques of Western Modernity. Moreover, such writing as there has been has tended to draw from the supposedly redemptive, recuperative and largely Heideggerian tenor of concerns regarding the relationship of humankind to technology and its desired capacity for architecture to mitigate, if not completely resist, the assumed imminent threat of technology to life itself.

Since the World Trade Center Towers collapsed in full view of the watching world (FEMA, 2002), the improved safety of tall buildings has become of prime importance globally (Pearson, 2001). International groups such as the UK-based ‘Safety in Tall Buildings Working Group’ (Roberts, 2002), and Arups High Rise (Wainwright, 2002) which are considering these safety implications have made recommendations for improvement in three general areas:

1. structural systems, especially with respect to progressive collapse

2. fire proofing, to structure and fabric

3. evacuation systems, concentrating specifically on vertical evacuation systems such as elevators and stairs.

‘A city seventy miles square but rarely seventy years deep apart from a small downtown not yet two centuries old and a few other pockets of ancientry, Los Angeles is instant architecture on an instant townscape.’ (Banham, 1971)

Two opposing attitudes shape the built environment of North America: the myth of transience and the myth of permanence.

William Braham writes that this book has been conceived as a genealogy of modern architectural colour, explaining that he uses the term ‘genealogy’ in the (Deleuzean) sense of it automatically bringing one to an understanding of the distance travelled since the particular origins under research. Such an analysis is useful to Braham who wants to bring to the practising architect an informed view of the use of colour in architecture by investigating the discussions that have surrounded it since the 1830s.

Architecture students tell stories about their work. These stories are meant to convey information regarding their convictions about design, the motivating concept for a specific design, and the intended meaning of the design. Such stories are calculated to have something to do with the work presented. Often, though, what is said is put forward and accepted as valid simply because it is said. Scrutiny of the relationship between such accounts and the visual or physical evidence frequently reveals a wide gap between intention and result. Credulity of such incongruity encourages a loose way of thinking that fosters a separation of thought (theory) from doing (practice). Concurrently, architecture students at the earliest stages of their education seem to require skill development above all else. But overemphasis on technique undervalues developing conceptual depth. If students are not introduced to design as an ill-defined problem, akin to formulating effective and persuasive arguments, their propensity is to produce work that tends to be ineffectively developed or represented while lacking theoretical sophistication.

As a child, on visits to Finland in the 1960s and '70s, I was constantly amazed by the way people lived. At home, in the Yorkshire army officer's quarter where we lived, I barely encountered the modern, let alone the really comfortable. Designed before the First World War for a large family plus servants and animals – the accommodation included a scullery, butler's pantry, paddock and orchard – our house was huge, rambling and uncomfortable not to mention freezing cold in the rainswept, windswept northern winters.

There are many striking examples of Modernist buildings that house sculptures that are much more traditional than the architecture that surrounds them. To some extent these disparities can be explained by the uncontrolled installation of sculpture, the result either of a lack of concern on the part of the architect or of ignorance of what was to come. Of more interest here, however, is the deliberate positioning of ‘non-Modernist’ sculpture in Modernist buildings. To some extent such juxtapositions require that we reconsider our definition of Modern sculpture. Beyond this, we can ask what figurative sculpture gave abstract architects, and why they used it.

Do you enjoy being interviewed?

It depends. I had an interview with someone this morning from the Financial Times and they asked me ‘what is your ideal weekend?’ which I found completely painful…