Building Equity Services
Equity in the Built Environment
Everyone should have access to buildings where they can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. To achieve this, SWA supports architecture and design professionals in their efforts to create equity-centered buildings, spaces, and communities.
The term building equity represents the goal of creating built environments that are not only free of barriers for all end-users, but that also include solutions to enhance experiences for groups and individuals historically marginalized by design.
Services
Building Equity Services
Elevate design priorities of communities and end-users.
Our building equity services are rooted in elevating community and end-user priorities during the design process, with a particular focus on engaging historically underrepresented groups. We adopt a research-driven approach for gathering and transforming community data into impactful design solutions to create more equity-centered built environments.
Our building equity services include:
- Community and Stakeholder Workshops to establish building equity goals and elevate all voices in the design process
- Public Surveys and Focus Groups to identify design priorities of communities and end-users
- Post-Occupancy Evaluations to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of equity design strategies using both quantitative and qualitative data
- Existing Conditions Inspections to establish areas for improvement
- Inclusive Design to accommodate the needs of people with physical, visual, hearing, and cognitive disabilities, while also ensuring equitable environments across all aspects of human diversity
- Equity Research Initiatives in collaboration with the Alliance for Inclusive Design Practice and Research (formerly the Center for Universal Design)
- Education and Training
The Building Equity Standard
The Building Equity Standard™ (the Standard) aims to advance equity through the design of our buildings, spaces, and communities. The Standard supports architects, designers, owners, and building managers in gathering insights through community-engaged design and translating the data into tangible design solutions. Ultimately, the approaches and design solutions outlined in the Standard serve as a roadmap for addressing the specific and unique needs of end-users and communities.
The Building Equity Standard is an initiative powered by SWA, drawing from our decades of experience navigating complex building rating systems such as LEED, Passive House, Enterprise Green Communities, among others.
Projects & Initiatives
Equity Projects
KNOWLEDGE HUB
