Here’s a succinct update from Kendeda Building Director Shan Arora on the building’s progress toward certification (along with tips on taking a virtual tour and some news on social media). To me, the highlight is the first bullet point: The building’s energy system (in an admittedly mild winter) was running well within the net-positive range — and that was before covid-19 drove consumption way down.

Here’s Arora’s full email:

I hope all is well with you and your family. Given your involvement with The Kendeda Building as an office occupant, instructor, staff member, or member of the design/operations team, the following updates may be of interest to you.

Performance

It has been a strange time for us all. Prior to the world shutting down, the building was exceeding energy and water performance. Details are below.

• • Energy – The building overproduced electricity in December, January, and February when it was modeled to have been net-negative during those months. For those three months, the building produced 23 percent more electricity than it consumed. From December 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, the building produced 70% more electricity than it consumed.
  • Water – We have had the wettest winter on record and are comfortably net-positive.

 Virtual Visits

The Kendeda Building has a robust in-person tours program. Since August 5, 2019, at least 2,544 people took a tour. Under normal circumstances we have about 363 people take a tour each month (this includes three weeks of no tours due to Winter Break). From January 10 to March 13, 2020, which was the last in-person tour we gave, 935 people took a tour. That is almost 500 people per month! Given that no one can visit the building in-person right now, the team has completed a Virtual Tour of the building. Go to http://www.livingbuilding.gatech.edu and take a look. There are three views and over 30 hot spots. When users click onto a hot spot, they see brief text about the topic as well as pictures and in some cases, video. This interactive tool allows for users to virtually visit the building.

Social Media

On Wednesday April, 8, we launched across various social media platforms! The www.livingbuilding.gatech.edu website contains the icons of all four, allowing folks to easily connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We already have weeks of content lined up for deployment across the platforms! So please follow us, and please share these links with your networks so they can follow us on social media:

• • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/KendedaBuilding
  • Facebook: www.facebook.com/KendedaBuilding
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/KendedaBuilding
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/KendedaBuilding

Deployment of Additional Tools

The team is taking advantage of these… interesting times… to focus on new features and tools to deploy on The Kendeda Building website. We’ll keep you posted.

Finally, many thanks to members of the team for helping get the Virtual Visit and social media accounts online: Kamilah Roberts, Kennard McGill, Joshua Gassman (LAS), and Rachael Pocklington.

An explainer on some relationships may be in order. The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design. Arora and other Georgia Tech employees involved in the building are distinct and separate from the Kendeda Living Building Chronicle. The building and the Chronicle are linked by the Kendeda Fund, which donated up to $30 million for design, construction and operation of the building, and separately funds funds the Chronicle. Kendeda founded the Chronicle to independently document the path of the Kendeda Building toward Living Building Challenge certification. But  the Chronicle also covers the regenerative design and construction movement more broadly. OK. Whew. Got that?

Oh, and also: We at the Chronicle run our own Twitter account: @kendedaLBC. We tweet about regenerative design and construction in general, as well as about the Kendeda Building’s progress. Follow us. And follow the accounts Shan just set up, too.

PHOTO AT TOP: Kendeda Building Director Shan Arora shows off a beverage recycling station. Photo by Ken Edelstein.