www.buildingsandcities.org/about/richard-lorch.html
Richard Lorch
Richard Lorch is an architect, researcher, writer and editor-in-chief of Buildings & Cities. He was the former editor-in-chief of Building Research and Information and executive editor of Climate Policy.
He is a visiting professor at University College London and Politecnico di Milano. He works on organisational / policy responses to climate change - mitigation and adaptation paths - and the environmental impacts of the built environment and building performance at different scales from the individual building to neighbourhood to city.
As editor, his key concerns are fair, robust peer review assessment and feedback processes, author support and the diffusion and take-up of research and new knowledge by 'end users' - promoting two-way dialogue and co-production between stakeholders, practitioners, policy makers and the academic community.
Latest Commentaries
Two Key Messages for COP31
Space Heating & Cooling in NDCs 4.0: Nationally Determined Constributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. NDCs embody each country's efforts to reduce their emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. So it is essential to include the building stock (particularly space heating and cooling) in the next NDCs.
Realistic Retrofit: Residential buildings are major users of energy and emitters of CO2. What constitutes realistic retrofit? Affordable, practical low-carbon policies for homes are described for both the Global North and Global South.
Thomas Lützkendorf and Nick Eyre send their messages to COP31: prioritise the building stock in NDCs and implement policies for practical retrofit. Watch their videos - for links to the videos click on "More" below:
Practitioners’ Views of POE
Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is widely valued but weakly embedded in practice. Ant Marsh, Kate van Someren, Lara Clarke and Tom Randall (Arup Building Performance and Commissioning Services) explain the findings from a survey and focus groups with UK construction industry practitioners. They identified fragmented responsibility, split commercial incentives and a persistent fear of “bad news”. Making POE routine requires a shift from producing reports to a focus on improving outcomes by owning and acting on learning.