The last twenty years have seen fascinating developments in the nature of collaboration between artists and architects and in the approaches taken by artists making work intended for public spaces. These sophisticated projects go far beyond the standard 'art for architecture' remit, limited as it is to the addition of 'artworks' to already designed buildings, the work described here invites us to rethink the reputation that public art has acquired over the years amongst both the public and the artists themselves. Timely and wide-ranging, "Art and Architecture" explores the proliferation of recent pioneering work by both artists and architects that seeks to blur traditional boundaries between the two fields. Looking back to precedents in land and community art by artists from Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria to Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Joseph Beuys, Rendell discusses international projects by artists including Tacita Dean, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Paul Pfeiffer and Rachel Whiteread and architects as varied as Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Diller + Scofidio and Shigeru Ban. She visits 'site-specific' artworks, interventions into existing buildings, galleries operating outside their physical limits and the best of collaborations between the fields. More than a survey, however, "Art and Architecture" also draws on the work of thinkers from Walter Benjamin to Michel de Certeau to probe the meanings of place, space and site.

There are at present considerable concerns with how architectural research will be assessed in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) of 2008. In RAE 2001, most architectural research was submitted to one of three Units of Assessment (UoA): 33 Built Environment, 60 History of Art, Architecture and Design, and 64 Art and Design. There were subtle, but important, differences in output definition and assessment criteria between UoA 33 and UoA 64 with respect to practice-led research. Most importantly, in UoA 33 practice-led outputs were accepted by the panel, but only as publications, whereas UoA 64 assessed practice-led research outputs accompanied by a 300-word statement that clarified the contributions of that particular research to the development of original knowledge in the field. The diversity of methods and complexity of output types, combined with the composition of UoA 33, led to results that many feel did not properly reflect the strengths of architectural design, particularly practice-led research. This methodology essentially disenfranchised a significant part of the community from the rae process to the detriment not only of the community, but to the credibility of the process itself.

In this paper we describe the Pleasure of treasure treasure hunt around London’s King’s Cross area. The pleasure of treasure was devised as a response to Richard Wentworth’s exhibition An area of outstanding unnatural beauty, November 2002. Richard Wentworth sought to explore the character of King’s Cross by creating an exhibition space that would provide somewhere both where the overlooked and hidden histories of King’s Cross could be gathered together and also where people from the King’s Cross area could engage with activities that had been lost or overlooked. Similarly, The pleasure of treasure sought to take people around the area with a view to exploring its histories and oddities. More than this, it hoped to open up the area to fresh eyes, capable of seeing the secret treasures that lay there. In keeping with Wentworth’s project, the beauty of King’s Cross lay not only in the process of exploration but also in the chance encounters (of various kinds) that sometimes surprise and sometimes disappoint.

The prominent cultural critic Mieke Bal defines the new discipline of 'art writing' as a fresh mode of criticism, which aims to 'put the art first'. Following this definition, "Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism" puts the sites of the critic's engagement with art first. The book puts into shape what happens when discussions concerning situatedness and site-specificity enter the writing of art criticism. The sites explored are the material, emotional, political and conceptual settings of the artwork's construction, exhibition and documentation, as well as those remembered, dreamed and imagined. Through five different spatial configurations - both psychic and architectural - "Site-Writing" explores artworks by artists as diverse as Jananne Al-Ani, Elina Brotherus, Nathan Coley, Tracey Emin, Christina Iglesias and Do-Ho Suh, aiming to adapt such psychoanalytic ways of working as free association and conjectural interpretation to art criticism.

From my desk in my flat on the eighteenth floor of a tower block in south London, I can see a history of London's housing design lying at my feet: from the Georgian townhouses of the estate agent's newly coined 'Walworth village' to the ragged holes in the ground where the Heygate Estate used to be; from the pointed end of the Shard at London Bridge, wheresoaring skyward-penthouses, I am told, contain private swimming pools and cinemas, to the 'affordable' new flats being built along the northern edge of Burgess Park, in place of the social housing provided by the slab blocks of the Aylesbury estate, some of which have already been demolished, while others lie under threat. In was from this desk, that I wrote my last book, on transitional spaces in psychoanalysis and architecture, specifically social housing. As I drew the book to a close, I discovered that my own home was in Southwark's 'estate renewal zone'. 1 Property consultants Savills had been advising the council of the need to 'unearth the potential' of public land, including 'brownfield sites', a term which for them includes fully occupied housing estates. 2 According to Savills and others, postwar 'estates are not dense enough, and street style layouts should be reintroduced. 3 Although new research shows refurbishment has less social and environmental cost than demolition, 4 the advantage of new build is that existing residents can be moved out, and in return, following viability studies, the developers can make their non-negotiable 20 per cent profit while providing a small percentage of 'affordable housing'. 5 Tenants have been displaced from central London into other boroughs, 6 and leaseholders ejected from the city entirely, due to the low rates of compensation paid when the councils issue compulsory purchase orders. 7 I became so angered by the council's actions, that I decided to use my academic and professional working skills to get directly involved in the fight for the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, and to turn my fear of uncertainties around my London home into action.