Every now and then I exchange a few words via electronic mail with Richard Lorch, the editor of Building Research & Information, a journal published by Routledge in London, in which a number of my papers have appeared over the years. Now he sent me a file with a paper he would like me to review for him. “I thought the attached would amuse you especially as it revisits your work from 1972 and 1973,” he writes. And then he adds: “You were well ahead of your time…” Indeed, the paper rests on my master’s thesis at Harvard and a paper from a Harvard paper series, both from 1972, and a paper in a then prestigious journal from 1973.[1] After nearly forty years, the introductory and concluding paragraphs of the paper to be reviewed treat me as a pioneer in the field, which is surely amusing. Although Richard knows perfectly well that I have long decided not to review papers any longer, I may well bend my rules this time around. I bet this is what he reckoned, too. Feeling like a pioneer is precious enough, no matter the field.

Footnote

1. Bon, R., “Allometry in Micro-Environmental Morphology,” Harvard Papers in Theoretical Geography, Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Special Paper E, June 1972; Bon, R., “An Introduction to Morphometric Analysis of Spatial Systems on Micro-Environmental Scale,” Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1972 (Master’s Thesis); and Bon, R., “Allometry in Topologic Structure of Architectural Spatial Systems,” Ekistics (Athens), Vol. 36, No. 215, 1973, pp. 270-276.