The debate on the UK Government's recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which has grown steadily over our past two issues (5/4 and 6/1), reaches a climax in this one. Perhaps the time has come to ask whether arq is becoming parochial in its focus on a matter that seems of concern only to the UK. However, we offer no apologies for using the RAE debate to highlight the research crisis in architecture – a crisis that is by no means confined to the UK.

There are many issues under discussion. There is the simple matter of the ‘accuracy’ of the system in recognising high quality work: our correspondents (pp. 101–103) seem divided on this. Then there is the question of ‘fairness’ in the size of the financial reward: the sums available for distribution meant that many who performed well were awarded less than in the last round. And there is the ever recurring question of design as ‘research’: Bryan Lawson's contribution (pp. 109–114) surely provides the last word on this.

Three correspondents widen the debate beyond the RAE. Colin Stansfield Smith (p. 104) writes of a procurement system in which architecture has become marginalised. John Worthington (p. 104) makes a plea for both the profession and the schools to look outwards. And, almost incredibly, the letter from the outgoing RIBA Vice President for Education, Alan Jones (p. 105), seems to suggest that arq's prodding may have provoked coordinated action within the Institute.

The latest news is that the two incoming Vice Presidents for Education and Practice, Jack Pringle and Richard Saxon, are practitioners who are determined to bridge the gap between the profession and academia. Each is committed to promoting, supporting and disseminating research. Both see it not as a problem to be ignored but as an opportunity to be grasped. We wish them every success.

There is much to be done. Real needs must be identified and matched to available means in academia and practice; valuable unpublished material uncovered; appropriate methods of dissemination developed; and a realistic implementation strategy evolved. If the RIBA could, in partnership with practice and academia, develop such a programme, it would, in the process, acquire the ability to support the architecture schools in the pursuit of their own (and the profession's) interests. It would also enable the profession to speak with the kind of authority that the RICS Foundation has given the surveyors.

It is this wider agenda with which arq is concerned. If leading-edge practitioners and academics have a duty to enhance the profession's knowledge base then professional institutes have a responsibility as its guardians and sponsors. All must work together in a world in which architecture is increasingly under threat.

Well, I wasn't putting down the incredible success of architectural education at attracting students (arq 5/2, p 198). Not at all. What amused me about Duany's rightist discriminations (arq 5/2, pp 105–106) is their humour and empirical accuracy. A rare ingredient in so much architectural criticism and discussion. Does the left make jokes that make the right laugh? That seems a rather last-century issue.

Over the past year, one subject has dominated the Leader and Letters pages of each and every issue of this journal – the UK Government's last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This final number in our sixth volume is no exception. Sparked off by Philip Steadman and Bill Hillier's RAE review in arq 6/3 (pp. 203–207), three remarkable letters appear in this issue (pp. 292–293).

Most architectural education takes place within a university context. There are very considerable advantages to such an arrangement but, for a discipline as broadly based and practically orientated as architecture, there can also be occasional problems if aspects are inappropriately managed. Anyone who doubts this should read Philip Steadman and Bill Hillier's review of the Built Environment category of the UK Higher Education Funding Council's (HEFCE) 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) (pp. 203–207).

David Lea's Bridge Pottery (arq 6/2, pp130–143), like his other designs, demonstrates his unique gift in handling form and material and light and detail to create serenity and magic from the mundane and ordinary. This pared down modern design incorporates the essential features of the vernacular - human scale, a sense of place and the texture of natural materials - an Arts and Crafts tradition for our time, modest and informal but without the nostalgia and mediaevalism. It appears effortless but, in reality, it is difficult to achieve, requiring a clear vision and an uncompromising approach in its execution.

The two articles on canopies in the last issue of arq (6/3, pp214–229 and 230–245) make interesting reading. The briefs must have been quite similar – but what a difference in approach to design! Both canopies had to provide temporary cover to a fairly small area, during the summer, at about the level of a normal storey height, and both had to be easy to put up and take down in a fairly short time. The canopy in a courtyard in Amsterdam had to relate to the building and was originally intended to partly surround a tree [1]; the canopy for the Chelsea Flower Show was free-standing in the garden [2]. But the differences in situation do not account for the differences in design approach. The only common points here were that both were designed by a collaborative effort between architect and engineer – surely the only way to design something like this – and for both the starting point seemed to be, by implication, the rejection of anything totally regular, and the need to be innovative.

As a former student of Leslie Martin I well understand that ‘in the UK, architecture's standing as a research-led University discipline remains as low as ever’ (arq 5/4, p291). But then I share my own generation's disbelief about the current state of the Profession and the failure of any architecture school to be awarded the highest rating (5*)in the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The internecine misunderstandings between practice and schools of architecture are hardly helpful to the cause: the Profession's refusal to understand the current plight of schools with regard to resources and the low esteem and status of academic staff and – in the reverse perspective – academia seems oblivious to the cowed posture of large sections of the Profession in a world driven by the imperatives of the government's Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This more or less symbolizes in a general sense the current client/architect relationship or lack of it in the public realm.

It is a great pleasure to see in print this paper by Knight and Stiny (arq 5/4, pp 355–372), who have been collaborating for many years, Stiny predominantly as a theoretician, and Knight as a design teacher. Despite their close association, they have rarely published together, and it was something of a landmark when they gave a joint keynote speech, received with great warmth, to the conference in Greenwich in January 2000. The field in which they engage has grown rapidly, and few can be better placed to review its achievements, and establish a basic taxonomy to classify existing work, and map areas for further research.

There is a strange perversity about the way in which Dean Hawkes writes so eloquently about David Lea's work (arq 6/2, pp130–143) without mentioning sustainability or environmental issues. No doubt he will argue that they are implicit in Lea's programme. However this is essentially the problem in that without making them explicit, many people will not understand them. Hawkes is an authority on environmental architecture so why is he so assiduous in avoiding such issues in this piece?

While I enthusiastically welcome Michael Speaks' article ‘No hope no fear’, which draws attention to a significant shift in the culture of the architecture studio (arq 6/3, pp209–212), I question the advisability of announcing ‘the death of theory’, as it is going to be misunderstood, with unhelpful consequences. We have had theory of a sort for as long as we have had architecture, but this is not the sort of theory whose death is announced. The theory whose death is announced is much more closely defined, and while it has flourished in some places, in others it has hardly taken root. There are some ‘traditionalists’ to use Speaks' term, who have well-developed theoretical ideas, and others (whom I would prefer to call philistines) who think that we can get along perfectly well without anything more analytical than common sense and intuition. ‘The death of theory’ belongs to a recognizable tradition of such rhetorical deaths as that of the author, and – most pertinently here – Foucault's ‘death of man’. As in those cases, ‘we’ might get excited about a world-changing cataclysm, but most people will continue as if nothing had happened, and there is no doubt that theory will continue to flourish, in just the way that authors flourish and ‘man’ flourishes, despite being long dead.

Terry Knight and George Stiny's paper on classical and non-classical computation (arq 5/4, pp 355–372) reminds us that shape grammars have been around for 25 years. Both Knight and Stiny are to be congratulated on developing and sustaining the research paradigm to the quarter century mark. Computing about shapes has certainly been influential among those who think that theories of design and theories of computation have something to offer each other, or may in fact be the same thing.

Christine Hawley writes (arq 6/1, p5) that true architectural research, particularly that of a highly theoretical kind, is not acknowledged by the government bodies responsible for evaluating an architecture school's research output – and thereby, its funding.

Our profession suffers from a poor research base and what research we do is undervalued. We need to do something about this. We also need to address prejudices that have become established in the construction industry as exemplified by the outrageous references to architecture in the Fairclough Report. The good news with regard to both issues is that, for once, practice and the schools have a coincidence of interest.

I read with interest the detailed arguments presented by our colleagues at the Bartlett, complaining of the treatment of architecture by Unit of Assessment (UoA) panel 33 (arq 6/3, pp203–207). We and our colleagues from other disciplines at the University of Edinburgh were shocked at Architecture's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) result. We had been confident of at least a 4, but were awarded a 3a. We spent a disappointing day with the architectural historian on the panel to ascertain how we could have been so wrong in the internal estimation of our rating. I also had private discussions with another architectural panel member. Those on the panel we spoke to seemed to know little about our work. Our portfolios of refereed designs were not called for. It seems that our groundbreaking books linking the history of engineering and architecture were too far removed from what engineers usually do, and were not rated. Our books and articles on theories of design and information technology seem to have been of no interest.

Knight and Stiny's paper ‘Classical and non-classical computation’ (arq 5/4, pp 355–372) is a most valuable review of recent work in shape computation but also raises a number of concepts of value in architectural education. One of the problems faced by a ‘learner designer’ is the development of an effective ‘design process’. The ways in which a designer represents form in order to deal with it during design are not necessarily apparent in the final design, or in the resulting building: it is in design development that these representations and operations become explicit and the processes of composition become transparent. Since architectural computing makes explicit the structuring and ordering logic inherent in formal models and makes transparent the operations upon objects which result in designs, the computer provides a unique environment in which to explore the principles of design.

In their leader to arq 6/1, the editors quite justifiably express a fear that ‘the gap between lecture theatre and studio will grow ever wider and the schools ever more divorced from practice’. They also acknowledge that ‘of course, it doesn't have to be like that’. In the University of North London architecture school, for example, a research culture of design as research has emerged over the past decade or so. This has been supported by the past Head of School, Helen Mallinson, and continues to be supported by the new Head, Robert Mull, as well as the Vice Chancellor (Research) of the University, Chris Topley. This culture of critical practice affects the studio in a number of direct ways.

The demise of architecture schools in the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)will have caught the attention of every architect working in one of the UK's research-led universities (arq 5/4, p 291 ). The debate about architectural theory, its definition and application into practice is complex, diverse and sometimes contentious. Within universities where research success is at the heart of their culture, architectural ‘research’ does not necessarily follow conventional protocols or manifest itself in the refereed journals ubiquitous in other disciplines. But should it be any less valued because its output does not conventionally fall into one of those standardized categories?

Following up both your leader (p99) and Alan Jones' letter (p105) in arq 6/2, the arrival of Jack Pringle as RIBA Vice President for Education and myself as Hon Vice President for Practice does indeed reinforce the moves already in progress to create an RIBA voice in architectural research and to connect it to education and practice. Council has now created the necessary resources, but full approval of the initiative is still in the pipeline.

In his article, ‘No hope, no fear’ (arq 6/3, pp209–212), Michael Speaks presents what appears to be an ‘anti-theory theory’, a piece of eloquent theoretical writing in which he maintains that theory in architecture has come to an end.

I received a copy of your letter inviting a response to the issues regarding research and its relationship with practising and teaching architecture.