It is central to our understanding not only of the built environment around us, but of the cultural forces that are represented in works of architecture. Just as the Gothic Cathedral offers a compelling insight into medieval European faith and liturgy, so the villa in Los Angeles or the restaurant in Tokyo tell us much about the cultural conditions to which they are built responses. Architecture is more than shelter; it is a mode of cognition, a vehicle for understanding our history and surroundings. Yet, while architecture is responsive to an enormous range of cultural, social, and technological stimuli, it is also a discipline with its own demands, rules, and conventions. The nature of materials and the demands of the site on one side are balanced on the other by enquiry into the metaphysics and causation of architecture: not only how a building, a town, or a city was designed and constructed, but why.

Research in this area deals with the core intellectual issues of architecture's constitutive values, principles and characteristics. We focus on the history of architecture in Scotland, Germany and Central Europe, the architecture of the Italian Renaissance, the architecture of spirituality, the history of materials and technology, and the phenomenology of architecture.

ESALA also has expertise in the history and theory of Victorian architecture and European imperial/colonial architecture and urban planning. This includes the relationship between architecture and identity, nationalism, religion, science, technology, and imperialism. Current research projects in this area include religious architecture in Britain and its former colonial empire; architecture and imperial display in sixteenth-century Spain; nationalism and architectural identity in twentieth-century Taiwan; and the theory and practice of revivalism in late-nineteenth-century Britain.