Healthy Materials

A series on selecting, researching & specifying healthy materials

Gensler Raleigh's Design Resilience co-leader Lindsey Thompson and Interior Designers Gabby McCloy and Olivia Thomas presented an internal educational series on how to select, research, and specify healthy building materials.

The series is loosely based on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification systems as a reference. Each month a new topic surrounding materiality has been presented - Environmental Impacts, Sourcing & Local Materials, and Material Ingredients.

Each session gave Raleigh G's the opportunity to gain a high level understanding of the various lenses materiality can be understood and implemented in our daily work. By looking at materials through varying lenses we can reduce the overall lifecycle impacts of materials, source and support local economies and improve the health and safety of the users and environment.

Through this educational series and Gensler Firmwide's upcoming release of the Gensler Product Sustainability Standards (GPS) - Gensler Raleigh aims to continue to educate, implement, and advocate for healthier materials for our built environments. Upcoming topics for our Design Resilience meetings will include a deep dive on the new

GPS standards, Tally Life Cycle Assessment workshops, and Library Ambassador materials curation. We look forward to continuing the conversations.

At Gensler Raleigh we understand the importance of leading our market on the Design Resilience front and are excited to partner with clients and industry leading manufacturers to drive this change forward.

More Information:

For Gensler Raleigh teammates, the series presentation slides can be found on the following Miro Board: RL Resilience Champions Miro Board

Material Series Overview:

Session 01: Environmental Impacts

Intro to Embodied Carbon and environmental reporting.

Session 02: Sourcing + Local Materials

Intro to better sourcing practices and how to research local materials.

Session 03: Material Ingredients

Intro on understanding material ingredient reporting and red list.