Sustainability
The Dogrun
a place to share ideas
Lake|Flato strives to create restorative environments that reduce carbon emissions and enhance our understanding and relationship with the natural world. Our work reflects the belief that sustainability and design are two sides of the same coin — balanced, integrated, and inseparable. We design beautiful, healthy, highly efficient design solutions and system strategies that are tailored to each project and location. Design performance provides us with a clear path to achieving sustainability by integrating design with building performance, technology, research, innovation, and equity...
Since our founding in 1984, Lake|Flato has expanded to all floors and corners of our office at 311 Third Street in San Antonio. After committing to renovating our office into a healthy, high-performing, hybrid workplace, we decided to go against the grain of the building’s origins as a former car dealership and remove all parking and cars to create a community-centric outdoor living room. For a firm with a focus on sustainability, expanding our office meant removing rather than adding, and encouraging human and environmental health through outdoor amenities, connections to nature, and...
Every architectural visualization is a challenge in itself. For some projects, fidelity to style and detail is particularly important, while for others, authenticity in harmony with the surrounding environment is key. The talented team at Lake|Flato combines these components and brings the environmental aspect and the sustainability of the planned buildings even more into their Enscape renderings. For that reason, we are very happy to share the following guest post with you. Enjoy! Creating Enscape Visualizations The team uses various design technologies, from energy and daylight simulation...
Embodied Carbon Update: Investigations and Greenbuild In 2009, Lake|Flato began its carbon reduction journey when we adopted the 2030 Challenge and started tracking operation carbon on all projects. Carbon is also known as the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) associated with global warming potential (GWP). Buildings account for 39% of global GHG emissions, making it a high priority for designers to help reduce carbon through both operational and embodied methods. Embodied carbon specifically refers to the GWP associated with the GHG emissions produced during a material’s full life cycle (...
Incorporating renewable energy, such as Photovoltaic (PV) panels, into a building design is a highly effective strategy for improve building performance -- including a reduced power bill -- and reduced on-site fossil fuel consumption. Therefore, we strive to run a simulation on every project to facilitate a discussion with our clients around PV potential for a specific project even though every Lake|Flato project does not always include them. This post will highlight our process, including our simulation tool, how we calculate the energy offset, and PV array size. PV Tool Without getting into...
Investigations Team: Andrew Herdeg, Kelly Weckman, Allison Peitz We are at a critical point in time in which the “silver wave” of the baby boomer generation is growing rapidly and beginning to enter retirement age. This large cohort of seniors will need housing, and ideally, housing that can fit their changing needs as they age. There is a growing desire to age in place and avoid the upheaval of displacement so late in life. Senior living communities that can adapt to the changing needs of aging seniors are becoming a commodity, and as this sector grows there is an opportunity to explore...
Design Performance at Lake|Flato Architects The mission of the Design Performance team at Lake|Flato is to be the preeminent international practice for the integration of design and sustainability. Design performance provides a clear path to achieving this vision by integrating design with building performance, technology, research, and innovation. Here at Lake|Flato, there are three tiers of communication employed throughout our firm to support projects and promote design performance. It starts with the firm’s dedicated design performance team who is dedicated to advancing sustainability in...
Located in the heart of Austin’s South Congress neighborhood, the recently opened Hotel Magdalena is the first mass timber boutique hotel in North America. The mass timber wood structure honors the history of the site including the former 1950s Austin Terrace Motel – previously constructed of exposed heavy timber beams and columns in the mid-century modern aesthetic. The design team, including Lake|Flato, operator Bunkhouse Group and Ten Eyck Landscape Architects sought to reference this history and material aesthetic by creating warm, inviting structures. Scroll down for a look inside Hotel...
