Performance
The Dogrun
a place to share ideas
The first time I stepped foot in Lake|Flato was when I interviewed this past March. After an 8 hour whirlwind tour of the office and the city, I was impressed by the casual office environment and the amazing work on everyone’s computer, but most of all I was impressed by the bicycles. Lake|Flato not only supported cycling, but wanted to let everyone know it. For me, this was huge. Sustainability at Lake|Flato is not a fad or a marketing strategy, it’s who we are. Cycling is probably the greatest force for good in America today. Bicycle commuting can improve heath, lessen congestion, provide...
This past July we set a goal for 15 Lake Flatonians to become LEED APs by thanksgiving. Two months later we are happily moving ahead of schedule. In the past two month, we have accredited 10 new LEED APs, increases our AP count by 50%. We still need 5 more LEED APs over the next two months to meet our goal and win a whole office ice cream social!
Ever since Herzog & De Meuron’s De Yong Museum and Thom Mayne’s San Francisco Federal Building, perforated sheet metal has been all the rage. There are plenty of strong opinions on the aesthetic merits of perforated metal, but we are more interested in looking at it from a performance standpoint. Specifically, we wanted to know the effects of a perforated metal canopy on the comfort of those sitting below. To answer the question we set up an experiment in the parking lot behind the office. Our in-house data collector, Maite Bermudez, placed two sheets of metal, one 20% perforated and one...
What happens when you drive a metal screw through an insulated wall? It is well known that the assembly U-Value will decrease due to thermal bridging, but over all, how much of an effect can one screw really have? To answer this question we looked to the thermodynamic simulation software, Therm. Over the last few weeks our sustainability software guru, Joseph Dugan, has been working with Therm to help us better understand the effects of thermal bridging on our building envelopes. Today our first test results are in and that one screw is causing more problems than we ever thought. We ran a...
Just this year, the W Hotel in Austin became home to its own urban apiary, or collection of beehives. The colonies, which are maintained by the non-profit Central Texas Bee Rescue , are located on the rooftop of the 39th floor where they are expected to produce 100-200 pounds of honey annually. Their hard work is already featured on the hotel's food and drink menus as well as in the spa. With international concern over declining bee populations, apiaries like the one at the W Hotel are becoming more and more essential. This population decrease is often referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder...
The folks over at Architecture 2030 are in the process debuting another great idea: the 2030 Palette. The 2030 Palette is an interactive web platform containing a set of principles and actions for the planning and design of sustainable and resilient buildings and communities worldwide. In other words, it's a highly organized and interactive tool to help designers learn sustainable practices. The site is full of captivating diagrams and inspiring precedents organized by scale. The site is organized into five primarily swatches which are determined by scale from region to building. From there...
This past week in San Antonio was an unusually rainy one, leaving our typically overloaded bike racks here in the L|F office feeling a bit lonely. Despite the inclement weather, many LFer's held strong, covered up, and hit the streets - without having to hit the pump. It is, after all, a hard lifestyle to give up once you give it a go. The above graph reflects the average results of a baseline survey conducted each day over the course of last week to begin to track employees' commuting habits. While we did not plan on such a wet week, we are proud to see that more than half of the office...
On March 1st of this year the Austin joined the growing list of cities around the world banning plastic shopping bags. Our northern neighbor has many in San Antonio thinking it's time for us to follow suit. It is estimated that 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used in the U.S. each year which is just over 310 per person per year according to the Worldwatch Institute. This many bags require about 12 million barrels of oil. They are also a huge source of litter especially in coastal areas where marine life can mistake the bags for food and suffocate. Opponents of the ban argue that many...
Last week the USGBC voted to approve the new LEED v4 rating system and with it, new LEED AP accreditation Exams. We don’t know how much longer the current LEED 2009 exams will be available and this uncertainty has generated a lot of interest to earning credentials before the switch to LEED v4. Today we are setting a goal for the office: 15 new LEED APs by thanksgiving. This will increase our current LEED AP percentage from 31% to well over 60% and continue to establish ourselves has a firm that “walks the walk” on our commitment to sustainability.
We at Lake|Flato are proud to announce that our very own Bob Harris, FAIA and LEED Fellow, will be the keynote speaker at the North Texas Sustainable Showcase in Dallas this Thursday, July 11th. The event will focus on the importance of indoor air quality which has major impacts on occupant comfort, productivity, and health. While we often hear about outdoor air pollution (which is still very important of course), the conversation on indoor air pollution is just beginning to pick up speed which is critical because Americans spend, on average, 90% of their time in buildings (epa.gov). An...
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