Georgia Institute of Technology

By you have undoubtedly heard the buzz about Georgia Tech’s newest building, The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, constructed under the Living Building Challenge, in accordance with its seven sustainability petals – Energy, Water, Materials, Place, Equity, Health & Happiness, and Beauty. The building is on track to become the most environmentally advanced education and research building in the Southeast. There are two upcoming opportunities to visit the building.

The building will officially open to the public this week, on October 24 – and everyone is invited to the Open House, scheduled to run from 11AM-2PM. And from Oct. 28-30, the GT Sustainability Showcase will feature lightning presentations and posters highlighting all sorts of sustainability research and education initiatives led by faculty and staff across campus.

Register today for a Spring course - and be one of the first GT students to take a course in the building!

This is a teaching building with nine classrooms, and it will house a whopping 42 classes this Spring Semester, 18 of which will be SLS-Affiliated courses:  

ARCH 6071 21st Century Urban Housing Design Studio

BC 6675 Residential Design and Construction

BIOS 2336 General Ecology Lab

BMED 4813 Special Topics: Clinical Observation Design Experience

CP 6233 Sustainable Urban Development

CP 6611 Real Estate Finance and Development

EAS 2600 Earth Processes

EAS 3110 Energy, Environ, Society

ECON 2105 Prin of Macroeconomics

ENGL 1102 English Composition II: Sovereignty, Energy, and Settler-Colonialism (2 sections will be taught in the building)

FREN 4064/6064 Sustainability & Development in the Francophone World

LMC6250/ML4813/ML8813 Climate Change Imaginaries

LMC 3043 Disruptive Business: An Approach to Arts Innovation in Atlanta (2 sections will be taught in the building)

SLS 3120 Foundations of Sustainable Systems

VIP: Building for Equity and Sustainability

VIP: BeeSnap​

VIP: Configurable Computing and Embedded Systems

VIP: Living Building Science

Many of these courses will use the building to help teach sustainability by relating the seven petals  of the Living Building Challenge to the topic of the course. Some of these courses will even use our SLS Living Building teaching tools. (See the full list of courses to be taught in the building, here.)

Join us in pushing the Equity Petal in new directions

SLS, together with Institute Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a group of faculty and staff from across campus, has taken a leadership role in pushing the Equity Petal in new and deeper directions. Check out our new VIP: Building for Equity and Sustainability, through which we’ll engage in the equity projects in the 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.

Wondering what equity is in the first place – and what it has to do with sustainable building?

• Read CEE student and Living Building Equity Champion Angelica Acevedo’s insightful and poetic blog post, Equity Petal: When is a ramp not just a ramp?
• Join SLS for a half-day workshop, offered with ILFI and the NAACP, on Nov. 19: EMERGE Leadership: An In-Depth Workshop for Equitable Sustainability Leadership (scholarships available for GT students, faculty, and staff)
• Visit us at this Tuesday at the VIP Poster Session to learn more about our VIP – 4-5PM, Klaus Atrium

What an amazing resource to have on our campus. Take a look at all the ways in which you can be involved with this resource through SLS.  See you soon in The Kendeda Building!

Interested in reading more about the unique challenges of a Living Building in the south?  Check out this article that was featured in the Wall Street Journal recently.