‘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.

Paolo Tombesi's paper (arq 5/2) managed to be both entertaining and thought provoking.

The environmental analysis in Rob Marsh, Michael Lauring, and Ebbe Holleris Petersen's paper ‘Passive solar energy and thermal mass: the implications of environmental analysis’ (arq 5/1, pp.79–89) is an important example of how important analysis is in identifying the design issues.

Andres Duany's critical sketch of architectural fashions rampant in US schools (arq 5/2, pp.105–106) carries a well-aimed barb, thrown from the right of stage. Duany's amusing categories call out for a post-modern Osbert Lancaster to illustrate them (as Lancaster did in Pillar to Post), except that the job is done monthly in the journals without comment. Anyone who has endured the Jencksian categorymania will enjoy this report from the zoo. The last comparable inventory was made by Aldo Van Eyck with his Rats, Posts and Pests speech.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1951, Le Corbusier designed a funerary chapel in Caracas to honour the memory of Colonel Carlos Delgado-Chalbaud, the recently assassinated president of the Venezuelan military junta. This enigmatic project – unknown until now – provides an interesting insight into Le Corbusier's use of architectural references and their layers of symbolic meaning. Most documents have mysteriously disappeared, but the few remaining have allowed the project to be reconstructed rather accurately.

Air conditioning is now recognized as a significant factor in global warming and climate change. In the search for alternatives, passive downdraught evaporative cooling (PDEC) is proving to be both technically and economically viable in different parts of the world. Brian Ford describes the principles and current practice of this innovative approach to cooling in the hot dry regions of the world.

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.