SUSTAINABLE DESIGN PERFORMANCE VISION

The built environment is a substantial contributor to a variety of environmental and health impacts. Lake|Flato strives to create restorative environments that reduce carbon emissions and enhance our understanding and relationship to the natural world. Lake|Flato’s work reflects the belief that sustainability and design are two sides of the same coin — balanced, integrated, and inseparable. We strive for a healthy, coherent, place-based approach to building. 

Our 15 AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Awards - the industry’s best-known award program for sustainable design excellence, a recently certified Living Building and numerous LEED Platinum and Gold certified projects attest to our passion for a high-performance sustainable architecture that thoughtfully engages and enhances its place.

Lake|Flato's 2023-2025 Design-Performance Action Plan outlines our goals, objectives, and strategies in three critical areas: PRACTICE. PEOPLE. PLANET. Each focus area has specific strategies on how and when we will achieve these goals. Many of these goals take inspiration from existing frameworks and standards such as the AIA Framework for Design Excellence, WELL Building Standard, The International Living Future Institute and associated programs, the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and more  

 

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Their work demonstrates that beauty and sustainability are not mutually exclusive and that our future depends upon our rediscovering how we once built and what we once valued: humility and honesty, respect and restraint.
Thomas Fisher
Educator and Author, University of Minnesota
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File Download Icon Download LakeFlato_Design Performance_Action Plan.pdf

Post Occupancy Evaluation

Real-time feedback helps occupants understand the impact of their behavior on the building’s resource consumption, thus often reducing consumption. Lake|Flato is committed to tracking and reporting our post-occupancy data to help reflect and improve our designs.

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Integrated Design Process

Lake|Flato is committed to exploring design performance in all project phases with the help of our design performance team and expert consultants. We utilize an integrated design process where all team members, including the building owner and users, help develop a shared vision and goals that celebrate and support sustain

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Carbon and Resource Efficiency

Lake|Flato is committed to the efficient and thoughtful use of our world’s resources. We design high performing buildings that use less energy, reduce the embodied carbon impacts of building materials, and conserve water. The ultimate goal is for all our projects to have a positive impact on the world’s resources.

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Health and Wellness

The built environment can profoundly impact the health and well-being of people. We seek to enhance connections to nature, improve air quality and access to daylight. Lake|Flato’s unique approach to human-centered environments and biophilic design seeks to positively affect both human and ecological well-being.

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Recognition and Certification

LakeFlato has been recognized with over 300 design awards and has deep experience and proven success with many certification programs and platforms.

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Water Conservation

Lake|Flato understands that the Earth’s water is an invaluable resource. As such, our projects are deeply integrated and take inspiration from the regional watershed, unique climate, and ecology of its site.

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Office Performance

Lake|Flato has a long-standing commitment to connecting people and place through both our design practice and office operations. In renovating our San Antonio office to create a healthy, high-performing, and inclusive work environment, we are physically expressing the goals we aspire to in our design work and firm culture.

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