Editor's Note

Buildings & Landscapes showcases stories about relationships. Our articles and reviews chronicle the ways in which human beings interact with, shape, and are impacted by their physical environments. They detail how spaces bring people together—as well as push them apart.

The process of producing the journal also engenders relationships. Writing, editing, and publishing an issue of B&L establishes and furthers exchanges between scholars and the field(s) they engage with their research; between authors, blind peer reviewers, and the editors; and between the editors and their advisors. One of the distinct privileges of serving as an editor for B&L is fostering these relationships.

As coeditor for eight issues over the past four years, Carl Lounsbury has been a fulcrum for these relationships, ensuring that the journal has continued as a space for fruitful conversation and the questions and challenges that result. It has been an honor and tremendous pleasure for me to take over from Anna Vemer Andrzejewski as Carl's coeditor over the past two years. As Carl steps down from his term, I will miss his unflappable attitude and good humor (even while facing torrents of my emails and unending questions). Carl looks forward to resuming work on his book on early American churches and meetinghouses as well as a number of shorter research projects. He will continue to teach at William & Mary and, like so many, anticipates traveling in the post-Covid world to see the mosaics of Ravenna again and take walks in the Windrush Valley of England. Carl's deep generosity and knowledge of the field has strengthened the journal and his mentorship has made me a better writer and collaborator.

Buildings & Landscapes has also been extremely lucky for the hard work, broad networks, and creativity of its book review editors, Andrew Johnston and Jessica Ellen Sewell. They have coordinated and edited reviews in six issues over the past three years, featuring a broad range of publications (and recently, exhibitions) that capture remarkable research in the history of vernacular architecture and landscapes. Jessica looks forward to focusing on her research and writing, including a book on gender and vernacular architecture; an online guide to the cultural resources of Suzhou, China; a book on masculinity and the bachelor pad; and other smaller projects. She will continue to teach classes on gender, race, cities, and material culture at UVA and looks forward to post-Covid travels to China and mountain biking trails in the Southwest. Andrew continues to be the director of the Program in Historic Preservation at UVA, where he emphasizes international and critical approaches to preservation practice. He continues to lead UVA teams working with digital methods, recording both buildings such as Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest and Palladio's Villa Rotonda and the cultural landscapes and spaces of labor associated with them. During a sabbatical in 2021 he is working on a book on contemporary preservation practice in China. Chinese preservation today engages with central themes of international heritage practice, shedding new light on impermanence and intangible heritage, politics and nationalism, and tourism and development, forces which are all part of heritage practice but which China brings into particular focus. I am very grateful for Jessica and Andrew's work encouraging thought-provoking analysis of the latest scholarship.

Two new scholars have agreed to step into the shoes of these impressive colleagues, Michael Chiarappa as coeditor and Rachel Leibowitz as book review editor. Michael comes to B&L as an author and, most recently, guest editor of the Fall 2020 issue. Michael J. Chiarappa received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. He is coauthor of Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan (2003), coeditor of Nature's Entrepot: Philadelphia's Urban Sphere and Its Environmental Thresholds (2012), and the author of articles focusing on vernacular architecture and landscapes, local/regional history, and the use of natural resources in maritime environments. Chiarappa's research and teaching focuses on the history of America's built environments and landscapes, American environmental history, American maritime history, and the wider field...