Touring The Gessner Center: Building with Nature for Resilience and Renewal

Join us for a tour of the Galveston Bay Foundation’s new home, the Gessner Center. The Center demonstrates how architecture and landscape design can serve as active agents of ecological stewardship, advancing the Foundation’s mission to protect and restore the Gulf Coast environment while fostering meaningful community engagement.

Located in Kemah, the state-of-the-art four-acre headquarters facility, designed by Kirksey, includes event space, laboratories for water quality sampling, a living shoreline, trails, boardwalks, an observation deck, and educational and event spaces integrated within the natural habitats, creating ripple effects of environmental and social benefit that extend far beyond the property line. The Gessner Center embodies the importance of designing with ecological context in mind.

The tour will highlight the project’s pursuit of the Living Building Challenge goals, including net-positive water and energy strategies, material transparency, and habitat restoration, which is the world’s most rigorous green building certification.

Design Team
Architect: Kirksey Architecture
Landscape Architect: TGB Partners
General Contractor: Satterfield & Pontikes
MEP: CMTA
Civil Engineering: Duplantis Design Group
Structural: Pinnacle Structural Engineers

This event is free and open to the community.

Pending approval for AIA and ALSA HSW credit.