Gonchar, FAIA| Architectural Record

Joann Gonchar, FAIA, LEED AP, is deputy editor at Architectural Record. She joined RECORD in 2006, after working for eight years at its sister publication, Engineering News-Record. Before starting her career as a journalist, Joann worked for several architecture firms and spent three years in Kobe, Japan, with the firm Team Zoo, Atelier Iruka. She earned a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University. She is licensed to practice architecture in New York State.

Kinetic Architecture: Designs for Active Envelopes

By Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

June 16, 2014

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By Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn. Images Publishing, April 2014, 224 pages, $78. Smart Skins Despite its title, Kinetic Architecture is not a book about buildings with components that literally move. Instead, its authors, Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn (both former editors at Architectural Record), investigate projects with envelopes that dynamically respond—in ways both visible and invisible—to their surroundings in order to modulate the interior environment, conserve energy, and enhance the comfort of occupants. Linn, an architect and director of communications for the University of Kansas School of Architecture, and Fortmeyer, an electrical engineer and sustainable-technology specialist at

The New Master Builders

Architects warm to a project delivery method that makes them more integral to the construction process and reasserts their control over the final product.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

May 16, 2014

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Fact or fiction, it is a common perception that the design and construction process is plagued with problems: cost and schedule overruns, under-detailed design drawings, shoddy workmanship, disputes, and litigation.

Sun Valley House

A Split With Tradition: Making the most of its spectacular setting, a house in a mountain resort town cracks open an everyday form.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

April 16, 2014

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When asked if his latest project, a vacation home in the Idaho resort town of Sun Valley, is at all based on a local vernacular, Tuscon-based architect Rick Joy bristles.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

April 4, 2014

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This interview appears in the March/April 2014 issue of GreenSource. Stephen Selkowitz, photographed by Eric Millette on February 11, 2014, at LBNL's FLEXLab in Berkeley, California. Stephen Selkowitz is leader of the windows and envelope-materials group and senior advisor for building science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. From 1985 to 2011, he headed LBNL’s building-technologies department, where he was the driving force behind a just-completed plug-and-play testing complex, the Facility for Low Energy Experiments (FLEXLab). Here users can mock up and evaluate the performance of proposed designs with actual building components such as cladding, windows, lighting,

Pearl River Tower

Towering Ambition: The architects and engineers behind an office building in rapidly expanding Guangzhou put super green before supertall.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

March 16, 2014

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In the realm of supertall skyscrapers, the recently completed Pearl River Tower (PRT) in Guangzhou, China, isn't that tall.

Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse

Order in the Court: A multidisciplinary design team applies a light and skillful touch to restore luster to a faded Lower Manhattan landmark while bringing it up to current standards.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

February 15, 2014

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A multidisciplinary design team applies a light and skillful touch to restore luster to a faded Lower Manhattan landmark while bringing it up to current standards.

Modular Classroom Makeover

New designs for portable school buildings make improvements that are more than cosmetic.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

January 16, 2014

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The mention of “portable” classrooms—or any similar term—puts fear into the hearts of parents with school-age children.

Marc Fornes/TheVeryMany

A small studio deploys computational design and digital fabrication to make inventive structures that define space.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

December 16, 2013

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At first glance, the work of Marc Fornes, founder of Brooklyn-based Marc Fornes/TheVeryMany, seems more like sculpture than architecture.

Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology

The Art of Science: A new center for the study of nanotechnology merges landscape with building, and sculpture with architecture, reshaping a formerly bleak part of the University of Pennsylvania campus.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

November 15, 2013

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Although located in dense West Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania has a genuine campus—one organized around a series of green spaces and landscaped quadrangles carved out of the surrounding urban fabric.

Facade Retrofits: Wrap It Up

Face-lifts for three buildings showing their age aim to correct performance problems, project a more desirable image, and address the needs of new occupants.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

October 16, 2013

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Like all of us, buildings of a certain age often have problems with their facades.

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU; 1 PDH

Explore façade retrofit strategies and award-winning design concepts that can transform aging office buildings into healthier, higher-performing workplaces for today’s hybrid workforce.

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU; 1 IIBEC CEH

Evaluate advanced PVC solutions that improve fire resistance, support WUI compliance, and enhance resilience in residential and commercial building design.