Gensler, a leading global architecture and design firm, announced an expansion of the Gensler Product Sustainability (GPS) Standards to encompass 20 building product categories and furniture.
For maximum impact, Gensler has selected materials used widely in residential, office and recreational spaces, ranging from everyday materials, like carpet and wallpaper, to less obvious components, like those used to build walls.
GPS Standards set sustainability performance criteria across the 1.25 billion square feet of buildings designed annually by the firm. The sustainability standards create a consistent approach for specifying and measuring the environmental impact of buildings, interiors and furniture, including carbon dioxide emissions associated with materials and construction, across the firm’s work in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Europe.
Gensler announced the GPS initiative in August 2023 and implemented these standards in January 2024.
In September 2024, the firm expanded the initial 12 product categories with the addition of eight new high-impact categories as part of a steady effort to increase the scope and stringency of the standards in alignment with the goals to drastically reduce net emissions associated with the firm’s work by 2030.
The construction, operations, renovation, and demolition of buildings produces nearly 40 percent of carbon emissions each year globally. In recent years, increased public dialogue of the embodied carbon of structural building materials, such as concrete, steel, and mass timber, and of building operations, such as energy use and efficiency, have increased awareness of how the built environment contributes to climate change.
“Gensler’s global impact and reach allows the firm to send a powerful market signal in support of better environmental performance for interior products and furniture,” said David Briefel, Principal and Climate Action & Sustainability Studio Director, and co-author of GPS. “GPS Standards are set up to reward manufacturers for making the necessary decisions to move the industry toward a more sustainable future.”