Miller Hull

By David Pendered

BBC has begun airing a video about Georgia Tech’s Kendeda Building in a series about buildings around the globe that advance concepts of sustainability and equity.

The exposure places the Kendeda Building squarely in a rarefied arena of buildings that help address some of humankind’s great problems.

Through the video, Tech’s Kendeda Building takes its place on a platform created by BBC StoryWorks in collaboration with the World Green Building Council. The purpose of the series is to, “showcase leadership in the sustainable building and construction industry,” according to a description by worldbc.org.

The video is a crisply edited, 4:59-minute reminder of the aspirations for a building whose benefactor, Kendeda Fund founder Diana Blank, intended for it to, “serve as an impetus for new ways of approaching the world we want to live in.”

One forward-leaning aspect of the Kendeda Building that hasn’t previously received much recognition is the implementation of the Equity Petal of the Living Building Challenge.

The idea of the Equity Petal at the Kendeda Building is to ensure the campus community feels welcome to use the building, regardless of race, class, gender, religion and so forth. The Living Future Institute describes the petal here. These notions were fostered at Tech by a working group based out of the campus-wide academic initiative, Serve-Learn-Sustain. Jimmy Mitchell, the Kendeda project manager for Skanska USA, described the Equity Petal on the video:

“The Equity Petal of the Living Building Challenge, it’s all about giving access to everybody no matter their background…. If you’re not thinking about your community, thinking about equitable development across all types of people with different backgrounds, then it’s not a Living Building.”

The video was paid for and presented by Skanska USA. Skanska served as construction manager of The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, in conjunction with the design team of Lord Aeck Sargent, of Atlanta, and The Miller Hull Partnership, of Seattle. Paid content is the norm on this particular BBC platform.

The story unfolds in the style of a feature on CBS’ Sunday Morning. The piece begins with one person revealing a personal insight, and blossoms out to encompass the larger subject. In this case, the video begins with the personal story of Tech student Angelica Acevedo. She’s a fourth-year student who transferred from environmental engineering to writing/communications, with plans to become a technical writer.

Read the full story at Saporta Report