Amy Oliver and Danny Pearl respond to Richard Lorch’s End of an Era editorial.
Over the past five years, we have published two different papers for Building Research & Information, one for a special issue on “net positive development,” and the other one, quite recently, for the “Environmental performance of buildings: festschrift for Ray Cole issue.” We were very saddened to hear that Richard Lorch will no longer be BRI’s Editor in Chief.
Many journals either fall into the siloed highly technical category or the inter-subjective qualitative category, where opinions are given significant importance, but rarely can one Editor in Chief appreciate the need to have both categories present and even some articles that attempt to bridge the gap between the two. Richard’s sensitivity to this complex balance has been wonderful, and it has assisted and guided us.
Richard has helped maintain an outstanding level of quality in the articles published in BRI. Not only that, but his level of engagement with authors made a huge difference for us in the publishing process. When we experienced some technical issues in resubmitting our manuscript after revisions, Richard walked us through the process. His correspondence was always very clear, professional, and helpful; he was quick to respond to any queries we had. These experiences stand in contrast to other publishing experiences we have had, where we sometimes do not even know the name of the journal’s editor. Richard Lorch made the publishing experience much more personal and hands-on, and his absence from BRI will surely be felt by the research community. We wish Richard all the best.
Amy Oliver is a designer and educator who is in the final stages of her doctorate degree at the Université de Montréal, where her research is focused on sustainable neighbourhood tools and frameworks. Amy has taught courses in sustainable architecture and post-disaster reconstruction at the Université de Montréal and McGill University.
Daniel Pearl is co-founding partner of L’OEUF (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel). He is also a half-time professor at the school of architecture of the Faculté de l’aménagement of the Université de Montréal (UdeM), since 2001, where his teaching has focused on sustainable design and construction, tectonics and introducing the integrated design process in Architectural, Urban Design and Ecological Urbanism studies.
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