When it comes to constructing and fitting out buildings, our focus is—or at least should be—on the holistic impacts of each decision we make. The best stewards among us know the importance of lessening long-term impacts measured over whole-building life cycles, and that begins, arguably, with material selections. Materials like cement, steel, aluminum, insulation, drywall, carpeting, ceiling panels, and others collectively represent an incalculable trove of embodied emissions, aka upfront carbon, to say nothing of what happens when the building is actually put to use and wear-and-tear phases commence.

Those individuals living their best 1.5 degree lifestyles notwithstanding, I believe in the power of grand gestures. I have previously written about the need for “big gestures from big global players” to effect real change. And in the world of architecture, the very biggest among them is making good on its commitment to hold themselves, their sub-consultants, and product manufacturers to account.

Gensler is the world’s largest architecture firm, in both revenue ($1.785 billion in 2022) and number of employed architects (3000+). The firm has 53 offices spread across five continents and has amassed a portfolio of built projects in more than 100 countries. It is only fitting that this industry leader has now released version 1.0 of its Gensler Product Sustainability (GPS) standards, a set of performance criteria for the top 12 most commonly used, high-impact building and interior product categories. The products in question include acoustic ceiling panels, tiles, and suspension grids; batt insulation; board insulation; carpet tile; decorative glass, glass demountable walls; gypsum board; interior latex paint; non-structural metal framing; resilient flooring and base; systems furniture workstations; and task chairs.

Sending a clear market signal

As of last January, the firm has made compliance with performance criteria a requirement for said products that go into projects in the U.S., Canadian, and European markets. (Criteria for other regions where Gensler operates are under development.) The criterion in question takes its cues from the mindful MATERIALS framework (established in 2014 by HKS, another design powerhouse), which bills itself as the building’s industry’s “certification-agnostic home to learn, advocate, and take action.” What started as an in-house library of best-in-class materials and corresponding labels has grown into an industry-wide resource.

In addition to being a contributing partner with mindful MATERIALS, the GPS standard is “a collaborative effort” that aligns itself with various criteria identified by Carbon Leadership Forum, LEED, Living Building Challenge, AIA Materials Pledge, and other standards. “We’re not in the business of data management; we’re not looking to become mindful MATERIALS,” says Peter Harrison, a designer based in Gensler’s Portland, Oregon, office. “We want to communicate with transparency and continue to advocate for public databases. This is part of the evolution, having free and public databases with sustainability documentation.”

According to Harrison’s colleague, Rachel Cowen, a design resilience leader for Gensler’s U.S. northwest region, “We have seen historically where manufacturers or design teams or clients tend to steer towards [products with Environmental Product Declarations or Health Product Declarations]. They’ll pick and choose what works for them or what the priority is for the project.”

The GPS standard seeks to transcend that à la carte approach by fortifying “a holistic understanding” of how building materials contribute to (or adversely impact) environmental and ecological health, biodiversity, and occupant wellness. In other words, the certification is merely the means to an end rather than the end itself.

This attitude is starting to become more commonplace, even among organizations like USGBC and ILFI that maintain building certification and rating systems and have a vested interest in seeing widespread adoption of their proprietary standards. As a business decision, this makes some sense. After all, when it comes to catching flies, altruism is the honey and opportunism is the vinegar. Gensler, on the other hand, occupies a unique position in this discussion. Despite this new standard, there is no such thing as a Gensler-certified product or building. It’s an aggregate, not a discrete pathway.

“The point of releasing it publicly was to share this information among all in the industry, with our competitors and our manufacturers, as well as their competitors, our contractor partners, our clients … we want to be able to get everyone moving forward,” Cowen says. “And with the power and size of Gensler, we have [the capability] to shift the market through this collaborative process.” She continues: “The material categories are largely focused at this time on what we have control over. So, we write the specifications, we select them for our projects, we have control, within bounds of course. We have a real ability to create change and work with materials that are meeting those performance standards.”

Past, present, and future

When the Gensler Product Sustainability standards were still in development, in late 2022, the firm set out to engage with over two dozen manufacturers who were committed to corporate transparency and establishing rigorous standards for their products, thus ensuring this whole effort didn’t amount to virtue signaling. Midstream, various internal pledges and practices were scrutinized, from benchmarks made as part of their AIA 2030 Commitment to regular carbon budgeting for new projects. Fast forward only a year and change and GPS is not only active but also baseline for all new projects in North America and Europe. That kind of soup-to-nuts turnaround may seem comically infeasible if not for the fact that Gensler’s been playing this tune for several years.

In the wake of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2019 report, which stressed the need to reduce GHG emissions across all sectors by 2020 (incidentally, something we almost pulled off by year’s end, not by choice, mind you, but via Covid lockdowns), Gensler unveiled its Gensler Cities Climate Challenge (GC3). This internal pledge committed the firm to design its annual portfolio, which they estimate at 1.25 billion square feet, to be carbon neutral and net-zero energy in operations within a decade. The firm further estimated that once its annual portfolios become operationally carbon neutral moving forward (assuming they can pull it off), the work will save 21.5 million metric tons of CO2e, or roughly the equivalent of removing 5 million cars off the road each year.

Gensler clearly appreciates its place on the global stage, and as such, acknowledges the burdens that come with market dominance. But when things like GPS and GC3 come to bear, those burdens become opportunities to implement evermore powerful market signals that designing with healthy building materials is in fact good business.

As Alison Mears and Jonsara Ruth write in the recently published book The Regenerative Materials Movement, “Mapping the way forward is the responsibility of all of us. We all work to change the practice of architecture and design and work towards the construction of healthier buildings. We look to governments to implement new climate/toxic reduction policies to guide and scale the systemic change needed to overturn the negative global warming impacts of building and transition cities towards a more sustainable future.”

This is irrefutable, but sometimes policymakers need a nudge from the private sector.

GPS v.1.0 is just the beginning. As Cowen describes it, this initial rollout is as much about messaging as it is effecting measurable change. “We intend to integrate structural and envelope components into the standard,” she says, alluding to future iterations of GPS. “So, that comes with more partnerships with our consultants. And then, of course, more industry alignment as well. As that expands to [more] materials such as extruded aluminum, cladding systems, etcetera, etcetera, we will have more opportunity to really make an impact on core and shell work.”

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