team was fully committed to the effort—client and contractors, alike. The team, in collaboration with WMA Sustainability Solutions Group, began materials research early in the design process, working to identify and review products that were both capable of meeting LEED requirements and did not contain any of the harmful chemicals and components on the Living Building Challenge Red List. In addition to the Red List restrictions, the Challenge also specifies protocol regarding the amount of carbon emitted in a material’s production and transportation; fair labor and sustainable resource extraction practices; the incorporation of regional and sustainable products and services; and the reduction or elimination of waste during design, construction, operations, and end-of-life.
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By taking on Petal Certification, Studio Gang realized that it had essentially joined the movement to require transparency in the content of building materials. Much like the labeling revolution that has transformed the food industry, this movement encourages all manufacturers to declare the content of their materials and the chemicals used in their production. As a method of measuring sustainability, it has the potential to create real change in manufacturing processes and related industries, such as architecture and construction, and ultimately how people choose the environments they inhabit. Many of the materials that the team investigated for the project didn’t comply with Challenge standards, whether because they contained some trace of one of the Red List components, the manufacturer was located outside of the required zone, or adequate information about the material’s makeup or produc-
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