Disciplinary challenges. Critical perspectives

At the Research Seminar held at the riba on 9 September (see Report, pp13-15), Alan Penn presented the next rae exercise as a creative vehicle by which the diversity of research and architecture could be acknowledged and consolidated as a basis for self-understanding. In principle, this is a good idea. However, it implies something of a common disciplinary understanding, as against the previous regime, where schools pursued different approaches within the loose framework of the riba assessment of design quality.