This study arose from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded ‘Connected Communities’ project. It was apparent at the outset that the AHRC had not considered that architecture might be important, if not central, to discussions on communities, and it became obvious that this attitude was prevalent throughout the academic and media worlds. Despite evidence that the formal and conceptual structures of architecture permeated numerous disciplines, and that the built environment permeated our personal and social lives, other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences did not think architecture was relevant to the humanities in general.

This belief is represented within the institutional structure of the AHRC itself. The AHRC Joint Electronic Submissions funding application process organises research into a three-tiered system of research areas: there are seventy-eight primary research areas including Visual Arts with twelve subcategories, Dance with five, Drama with six, and Design with six, of which architecture is one. There is no other research classification for the spatial environment, built or unbuilt. On the other hand a search for ‘architecture’ gives six primary research areas, encompassing thirty-six third level subject areas. Except for the architecture subcategory under Design, the others have to do with information, computing and software.