Thomas Muirhead's letter (arq 6/1, pp5–6) raises interesting points concerning Stirling's ‘variability’ – a quality I for one do not dispute: in my article (arq 5/4, pp333–353) I had chosen to focus on schemes which for one reason or another have been less fully revisited than more celebrated icons.

It is good to see innovations in housing design being applied to the private sector; the ultimate test of any new idea is that someone should want to invest in it. All too often in the past any experimentation in housing design was mainly confined to the public sector. Lack of ‘market testing’ was one of the main reasons why brave experiments sometimes went horribly wrong. All through those years of experimentation, between say 1955 and 1975, with the exception of Eric Lyons' Span housing, architects found fertile ground in public sector – local authority – commissions. It is only now, with loads of government encouragement, that major developers are beginning to sponsor new ideas in design, in higher density, ‘joined up’ housing.

My student years, 1961–67, exactly coincide with Archigram's first and best flourishing and, just as Jon Harris, in my Cambridge Architecture year, was the Cambridge salesman for the first issue of Private Eye, I was the Cambridge salesman for the first issue of Archigram. From this contemporary though partial viewpoint, Simon Sadler's article arq 6/3, pp247–255) seems historically convincing. I might, though, nuance the emphasis on Archigram ‘cultivating the anti-establishment reputation of 1960s youth’ and ‘an ill-tempered generation gap in early 1960s British architecture’. Most people, especially when young, proclaim themselves as outside the establishment tent, pissing in. So it's surely not noticeably ‘ironic’ that pre-War AA students did too. But there seems to me a world of difference between the soft ‘youthquake’ of early 1960s Britain (Quant, Bailey, the other Peter Cook, etc) and the leftist atmosphere of post-1965, the delayed echo in Britain of America's Vietnam and Civil Rights struggles. The first ethos – aesthetic, chirpy, self-mocking, and largely apolitical – nurtured the surrealist technophilia of Archigram's most interesting projects. The second, which really was ill-tempered and anti-establishment, made Archigram seem irrelevant or worse, as the article points out.

arq has been awarded the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers/Charlesworth Award for Learned Journals 2002.

Your leader (arq 6/1, p3) correctly concluded that the latest round of the UK Government's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results are the best yet overall for those departments in universities that include the subject of architecture. But we are in danger of misinterpreting this complex set of results as a result of some other more emotive and unclear arguments. Let me take the process apart slightly in order to clarify.

It is refreshing to see yet another take on shape grammars and their representations from Knight and Stiny (arq 5/4, pp 355–372), in particular, the distinction made between process and representation, thus facilitating further categorization of a variety of generative design paradigms. The term ‘shape grammar’ as used here refers to very specific representations of shape and computational processes and is often misused. A brief web search turns up many references to shape grammars. Some are unrelated to the work described here; others reference the shape grammarians but describe paradigms which are either not grammars or utilize different representations of shape.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to which every research-active UK university department has to submit every five years has fundamental resourcing implications for teaching and research – and thus, in the case of architecture, for the profession itself. Within the RAE, Architecture has always sat uneasily in a Built Environment ‘unit of assessment’ which appears to be dominated by construction and surveying – an unrepresentative state of affairs which can no longer be ignored. Leaders and letters in recent issues of arq (5/4, 6/1 and 2) have revealed the deep unease with which the results of the latest Exercise have been received. Now that full details of all RAE submissions have been published on the Web (www.hero.ac.uk/rae/ under ‘Submissions’), a fully informed analysis is at last possible. This article has been written in the light of this latest information.

Architectural education is under pressure: economic pressure to enrol more students, political pressure to award more degrees and more recently pressure from the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and RIBA to maintain and, in some cases, to improve standards. If this was not in itself enough, the schools must also undertake increasing amounts of research to obtain essential, additional HEFCE funding.

Spurred on by the post-'69 generation, theory in architecture reached its high-point in the '80s and '90s. Continental European tracts were welcomed as a ‘wondrous new mode of contemporary thought’. Derrida and Deconstruction dominated. The journals filled their pages with philosophy. Today, the theoreticians find themselves outfaced by the ‘intellectual entrepreneurs and managers of change’ confronting the highly competitive forces of globalization. Michael Speaks writes from a Californian perspective.

I am grateful to Tom Woolley (arq 6/3, pp198–199) for taking the trouble to point out that David Lea's pottery buildings at Cheriton can be used to demonstrate a thesis on sustainability. In doing so he adds further weight to my general argument that small-scale, tightly budgeted projects may lead to architecture of substance. But the central point of my article (arq 6/2, pp130–143) was, as is clear from its title, to explore the relationship between ‘Necessity and Poetry’. In pursuing this I took Lea's proposition, quoted in the article, that, ‘Light, Surface, Material and Space are the four basic elements of architecture’, as my reference and worked with these in elaborating my theme. It was my judgement that the point was well enough made. To have raised, explicitly, the question of sustainability would have confused the issue.

I read Christine Hawley's letter (arq 6/1, p5)with sympathy and agree that the generally poor showing by architecture schools in the Research Assessment Exercise has repercussions beyond the universities. It helps reinforce the lowly position of the profession in the eyes of the government – that we are a second order service provider within the construction industry.

Until about 1974 , James Stirling's work subverted and redefined the Modernist canon. Michael Spens is deeply sympathetic to Stirling and brilliantly analyzes some of the authentic masterpieces from that time, particularly Olivetti Haslemere and the St Andrews residential accommodation (arq 5/4 ,pp 333–353). Accurately, he identifies the unbuilt St Andrews Arts Centre (1974) as the point where things began to change. After that, influenced by Werner Kreis, Léon Krier and others (and of course Colin Rowe), Stirling began to explore an exciting amalgam of the abstract and the figurative, marrying his previously intransigent Modernism to a representational Neo-Classical idiom.

Inevitably, as some went up the pecking order and others down, the results of the latest Research Assessment Exercise will have delighted some schools of architecture and disappointed others. Now may be the time for recriminations and breast-beating. But it would be dangerous for architecture's standing in the academic firmament if it were to claim separate status or that research is somehow different for architects. Instead it is important that the architecture community responds positively to the outcome and understands what it takes to succeed within the rules. A fundamental question to be asked is whether the judgements meted out were deserved.

I am deeply concerned by the issues raised by Bill Hillier and Philip Steadman's article in arq 6/3 (pp203–207).

A recent conference in San Francisco called Point Break, the place where a wave comes ashore, looked at how the markets, perceived value, and knowledge of the architectural profession appear to be changing and what that means for education, practice, and client relations. It also revealed an astonishing trend in the declining numbers of architecture graduates seeking licensure.

We were approached in late spring of 2000 by Americans Beth and Charles Miller. Committed to raising awareness of sustainable development and the problems of global water shortages, the Millers were keen to bring their message to one of the largest audiences possible, and they chose the Chelsea Flower Show, the showcase of world gardening, as the place to do it.

The current debates on teaching standards, on research assessment and on the condition of the profession tend to be carried on in isolation from each other. In this article Gordon Murray, a practitioner and teacher, draws a connection between all three topics and underlines the importance and potential of research for both teaching and the profession. His brief review of teaching and professional formation in Japan provides a thought-provoking comparison with architectural education in the UK and the US.

The innovative use of materials, an inventive approach to gallery lighting and clarity of organisation distinguish this short-listed competition entry for a visual arts facility on a dramatic coastal site.

The design philosophy upon which our work is based may be summarized in our attitude towards the origins of a building, light as a primary agent of change, a respect for the nature of construction, the changing states of a building and the memory of other buildings and places.

The design and construction of this canopy and landscape for a small courtyard [1] took the form of an adventure in digital design and low-tech construction. The installation was for the end of year party in June 2002 at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. The courtyard occupies a central space in the school adjacent to the main lecture hall and contains a historic cobblestone court [2]. One of the design team, Neil Leach, proposed that it should be transformed into an enchanted garden suggestive of Dutch greenhouses and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Your leader (arq 6/1, p3) raised the critical issue of the nature of architectural research and where the responsibility and leadership should rest. You rightly point out that the dilemma for schools of architecture is how to integrate design thinking and research, and whether to see research as arts and design-based or part of the tradition of the physical sciences.