Georgia Tech’s newest building, The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, constructed under the Living Building Challenge, is on track to become the most environmentally advanced education and research building in the Southeast. The challenge focuses on seven imperatives, presented as petals – Energy, Water, Materials, Place, Equity, Health & Happiness, and Beauty.
SLS, together with Institute Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a group of faculty and staff from across campus, is leading efforts to implement the Equity Petal while also re-defining and pushing it in new and deeper directions. The Equity Petal currently aims "to transform developments to foster a true, inclusive sense of community that is just and equitable regardless of an individual's background, age, class, race, gender or sexual orientation."
There are two ways to get involved in our work – come join us!
Launching in Spring 2020, this new VIP will engage students in equity projects in the Kendeda Building, work with local communities on design projects that take equity as a central design criteria, and partner with The International Living Futures Institute (ILFI) and the NAACP to push equity in new directions in the sustainable building sector nationally.
The Living Building Equity Champions (LBECs) are Georgia Tech students charged with fully engaging in the development and realization of the Equity Petal and specifically our goals of engaging underrepresented groups on campus in the building. The LBECs work closely with the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion to provide programmatic and thought leadership, expertise, and advocacy to continue promoting the Institute’s diverse student initiatives, programs, and efforts that facilitate our collective goal of student diversity and inclusion.
Take a Course in the Kendeda Building
The Kendeda Building houses nine classrooms and teaches a wide variety of courses every semester. Many of these courses use the building to help teach sustainability by relating the seven petals of the Living Building Challenge to the topic of the course.
Interested in taking an SLS affiliated course in the Kendeda Building? Visit our Courses page and select the Kendeda Building option under the Program search criteria.
Learn More
What is equity anyway? What does it have to do with sustainable building? Learn more through these resources.
These articles, published in The Kendeda Fund’s Living Building Chronicle, talk about our efforts to date trying to advance equity during building construction and design:
- Equity Petal: When is a ramp not just a ramp?, by CEE student and Living Building Equity Champion Angelica Acevedo
- Georgia Tech aims to exceed Living Building equity goals
- The hidden power of equity in sustainable buildings
These SLS teaching tools, from the SLS Teaching Toolkit, are intended to be used as activities and assignments in GT classes, to help students understand the key role that equity and justice play in creating sustainable buildings and communities: