This is the final issue of arq's twenty-fifth volume. Twenty-five years, a quarter century, is frequently understood as a milestone marking both longevity and change, arq was instituted in 1996, responding to the UK's first government-led 'Research Assessment Exercise' in UK universities, necessitating new peer-reviewed journals in our field. It also addressed corresponding questions concerning whether, and how, architectural design could comprise research. Significantly, arq recognised the importance of research conducted across both practice and universities.A quarter century later, architectural research is now well established in academe and practice, with numerous means of print and online dissemination, and it is no longer disputed that design can yield original, significant, and rigorous contributions to knowledge. While the issues facing architectural research at the end of 2021 would not have seemed wholly unfamiliar in 1996, their shape and priority have changed over the intervening years. Like society at large, architecture currently faces significant global challenges - for example: combatting our climate emergency; addressing identity and ensuring diversity and inclusion; extending construction technologies and environmental approaches; improving health and well-being; advocating for social justice, community, and civic life; mobilising creativity and innovation for the greater good; celebrating expertise at a time of fake news; and valuing both contemporaneity and heritage. Like architecture itself, such challenges involve cultural concerns as much as they involve technical ones. Change can only be affected by appreciating how established cultural values and habits get produced and mobilised, and by understanding the tools necessary to make change happen.
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