Meet Shan Arora - Sustainable Building Expert and Forest Champion

Currently serving as the first director for the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Shan Arora isn't who you'd expect to be advocating for mass timber, but he is a vocal champion for forestry and wood in the built environment.

Timber is a key material in the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design. Currently being built on Georgia Tech’s campus, the Kendeda Building will be the largest academic building in the Southeast designed to achieve certification under The Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous criteria for sustainability in the built environment.

“We’re showcasing mass timber. It’s not something folks necessarily have heard of or understand in our region and we want this building to be a showcase for mass timber.”

— SHAN ARORA, DIRECTOR FOR THE KENDEDA BUILDING FOR INNOVATIVE DESIGN

Recently, Keeping Forests interviewed Shan as a part of our Year in Review to discuss the impacts of wood in reaching the Living Building Challenge certification requirements for carbon neutrality.

The use of mass timber technology is one of the most distinctive features of the Kendeda Building. Timber was chosen for its value in reducing the carbon footprint contributed by construction materials. On top of glulam columns and beams, the decking is made of nail laminated timber (NLT) panels constructed in partnership with Georgia Works. The decking is composed of 25,000 square-feet of locally salvaged wood and FSC-certified southern yellow pine. To construct the NLT decking, the team nailed 2”x 6” boards to 2”x 4” spacers, creating 489 floor panels that measure roughly 10’x10’ each.

““What a sustainably managed tree farm can do is provide us ecologic services, it can keep our ground water clean, it can help dramatically reduce runoff during a heavy rain. It’s cleaning our air. If we are using more locally sourced mass timber, that is displacing imported steel, we are now providing for a truly higher and best use for land. Not only does it serve as a carbon sink, not only does it provide ecologic services, it’s also enhancing the local economy.””

Shan Arora and the team at the Georgia Institute of Technology serve as a reminder that you don’t have to come from a forestry background to believe in the power of keeping forests as forests. They champion an audience the Champions & Leaders work stream is striving to reach.

To find out more about the Kendeda Building, please visit https://livingbuilding.gatech.edu