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.

It has been some consolation for the loss of Leslie Martin, a major figure in twentieth-century British architecture, to read the special issue of arq (4/4) dedicated to his memory. He was a great Englishman, a rare combination of theorist and teacher, of politician and generous benefactor. His resuscitated article of 1972, ‘The grid as generator’, is a theoretical demonstration of the qualities of the urban grid, and of how it may form the basis for a latter-day return to the problem of controlling urban development. As such it is masterly in its explicative power and in its prescience. And yet it raises some questions as to the role of design in urban design.

I warmly congratulate Jacques Heyman on the absolute clarity of his ‘An observation on the fan vault of Henry VII Chapel, Westminster’ (arq 4/4). But while this was not the subject of the author's study, many of us might well be interested to hear his view as to why the Perpendicular pendant came about since it is unnatural constructionally. Historians no longer with us sometimes supposed the pendants remembered the columns between nave and aisles in a larger church or cathedral, but I have not seen this referred to recently.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

This analysis shows how the increasing availability of computers in architectural practice and the steady development of electronic networks around the world could encourage the relocation of professional structures into countries with lower production costs. Starting from the existence of sharp professional wage differentials between developed and developing regions, it formulates the hypothesis that, in a few years, most architectural work could be documented in places such as South-East Asia and transferred digitally over to America, Australia or Europe.

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.