The Dogrun
a place to share ideas
"Pick any firm in the country and there is a single person that just knows where everything lives, someone essential to the continuity and culture of the office, a keymaster of sorts. At LF this is Denise. Known by many nicknames (perhaps mostly to me), like “Double D”, “short stack”, “Sugar”, etc, she is the mapmaker for all historical and cultural information; the gatekeeper for all important images, like that 20-year-old slide that David Lake recalls taking long ago but doesn't quite know where it was stashed but is "critical" for his last minute presentation; she is the talent behind our...
1) Disclosure The more data, the better. This year we are making a commitment to collect utility data from as many projects as possible and – with the owner’s permission – publish the utility data of our projects on our website. We will also encourage other firms to disclose the utility data of their projects. As demonstrated by the various 2030 Districts, utility disclose is key to understanding use patterns and decreasing energy consumption. Each January, beginning this year, we will publish our firm’s energy consumption, water consumption, and transportation emissions for the previous year...
This past September, the Central Texas Balcones chapter of the US Green Building Council kicked off its first year of the Green Schools Challenge . The 2013-2014 afterschool program, based on the National Wildlife Federation’s Eco-Schools curriculum, engages 4 th and 5 th graders in green building practices by guiding them through a process of measuring their school campus, designing a project to improve their school, and evaluating the outcome of their project. In the first few weeks of the Challenge, students get a basic review of topics related to healthy, sustainable, energy efficient...
During Greenbuild 2013 I had the unique experience of touring the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. A short walk from downtown, Eastern State was the world's first designed prison intended to inspire penitence and rehabilitate its prisoners through the "Pennsylvania System" of isolation. Al Capone counted among the notable tenants during ESP's operating years from 1829 until the very recent 1971. The original plans called for one-story cellblocks stretching out in a radial pattern from a central guard station. Each cell was originally accessed only from a rear exercise yard, where...
There are many points in time to begin telling this story. In geologic time, we could start 10 million years ago when the west Texas landscape was forming. We could start our story when the people of the Lower Pecos were making their rock art 3,000 years ago. We could start when Lake|Flato began their work with the Witte Museum, creating a new home for their People of Pecos exhibit with additions and renovations to their existing space. We could start our story in the small "town" of Comstock, Texas, where a group of LFers spent a Saturday night drinking beer around a pool table getting to...
Last week a few of us traveled to Philadelphia for Greenbuild to learn about the latest trends in sustainable design. The week was full of seminars and product demonstrations and culminated with a keynote by Hillary Clinton and a performance by Bon Jovi. Here are the major takeaways from the week. We should know what our buildings are made of. The one overarching theme of Greenbuild this year was material transparency. A building may be beautiful, but is it giving its occupants asthma, or allergies, or cancer? The first step to ensuring healthy materials is material transparency and...
Located on the site of the former Teas Nursery in Bellaire,Texas, an incorporated city within Houston, Evelyn’s Park aims to serve as “Bellair’s Front Yard;” to be a vibrant and vital amenity for the city. Situated near the edge of the city on Bellaire Blvd, the park is strategically located to help define the entrance and identity of Bellaire as a whole. Lake|Flato has been working closely with the Evelyn’s Park Conservancy and SWA Group, master plan Landscape Architects, to define this identity and create an engaging experience for all ages that strikes a balance between the prominent urban...
A group of Lake Flatonians attended the San Antonio AIA Awards Banquet last Friday. It is always exciting to put projects up for award consideration and very rewarding and humbling to be selected for recognition. It ended as a very memorable evening that saw the firm win a record 6 design awards including top honors for our Desert Residence and Cranbrook Kingswood Girls' Middle School. Out of a total of 88 submissions only nine received built design awards.The jury of Josh Shelton of El Dorado (Kansas City), Rusty Smith of Rural Studios (Auburn University) and Wendy Pautz of LMN Architects (...
This past summer Cameron and I ventured to Hamburg to visit former Lake|Flatonians Heather Weiler and Jeremy Fields. Hamburg was a surprising mix of city & greenspace, modern & traditional, and beer & pretzels. Both Heather and Jeremy have settled into life abroad, Heather is currently working for MOKA studio doing incredible renderings and Jeremy is working for Trapez Architektur fulfilling his dream of designing beautiful buildings that can be captured with a single hand gesture. The top image is of Central Park which is Hamburg's version of San Antonio's La Tuna Ice House. An...
Myself, my husband, our dog, and a couple roommates are slowly but steadily transforming this Southtown San Antonio house into our dream home (and home office). In doing so, we want to create a contemporary home setting that also embraces the historic nature of the 1907 building that we are renovating. In its 100+ years on this site, this house has functioned as a private home, a multi-resident apartment building, a bed+breakfast, and most recently the crashpad/workspace for some software developers. While the building hasn't always received much TLC, it does have a remarkable set of remnants...
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