Zürich architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer display an enjoyment of the realities – both physical and intellectual – of architectural production and, to this extent, can be seen as part of a prevailing pattern in northern Switzerland. This paper comments on their work and shows it also to be creatively critical, subverting a number of modern orthodoxies and supplanting them with an affective internal logic.

Although hailed by Sigfried Giedion as the leader of the Third Generation of modern architects, Jørn Utzon has generally been interpreted as a Nordic regionalist, in succession to Asplund and Aalto. Drawing on both familiar and unpublished material, taken from a monograph to be published by Edition Bløndal later this year, the paper explores striking, but previously neglected or ignored parallels between the work of Utzon and Le Corbusier. A comprehensive assessment of Utzon's work is long overdue, and should situate him in the mainstream of international modern architecture.

One of the sad oddities of academic life is that great and original contributions get cursorily noticed at the time of their appearance, and are then ignored. Leslie Martin's ‘The Grid as Generator’ is one such case. Published in the book he co-authored with Lionel March in 1972, this opening essay – and indeed the entire book – represented an extraordinary breakthrough in urban research. Yet neither has been properly recognized.

David Lea is known for his refined and sensitive designs and for his long-standing concern for issues of sustainability. Sadly, many of his projects remain unbuilt. The latest of these is a visitor centre for an internationally renowned garden and arboretum in southern England. The design, described by Peter Blundell Jones, marks a break from Lea's customary use of pitched roofs and embraces the planning freedom which flat roof allows. But its greatest significance lies in the inspired manner in which the building acts as gateway to a remarkable landscape described by Jan Woudstra.

Two competition designs have provided frameworks for ideas for the establishment of new communities. The projects provided the opportunity for the design team to consider core architecture (urban and architectural space) and its relationship with extended architectures (detailed design and construction). The building designs have been required to meet performance standards considerably in excess of recent UK norms. This paper describes the design approach and demonstrates how research (university and practice based) has contributed to the two submissions.

Interaction between the contents and the architecture lies at the heart of the Museum of Scotland's presentation of the story of the land and its people. The design accordingly raises questions concerning the relation between architecture, the viewer and the educational message. Space syntax techniques suggest that this relation is based on a configurational logic combining informality and a clear structure. This study also examines the curatorial interpretation of the collections and demonstrates that the building forms a coherent setting for objects and exhibition themes.

Three small mews houses in a Dublin suburb are reviewed here in terms of their typological ambitions, formal preoccupations and vision of domesticity. Their nature and form is compared with an earlier project by Cleary and Hall in order to extrapolate a more general picture of the changing criteria and concerns guiding Dublin's architectural development. The project demonstrates how a repeating order can accommodate difference. The feeling of exposure in their unusually open upper floor living areas is tempered by the exhilarating sense of contact with the city.