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Format: 2023-06
Format: 2023-06
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House Zero Named to TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of 2022

November 2022

Every year for over two decades, TIME Magazine editors have highlighted the year’s most impactful new products and ideas. We are proud to share that House Zero, a collaboration between ICON and Lake|Flato, has been named to TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2022.

 
Pushing the boundaries of traditional home building methods, House Zero is a demonstration project showcasing the performance capabilities of 3D printing. Designed to address the need for resilient housing solutions, House Zero reveals new ways to create shelter by striving for more efficiency in the waste-prone home building process. Built for permanence and resilience, the house’s flexible plan and climate-responsive design supports ever-evolving patterns of living and aging-in-place that a family experiences over the course of a lifetime.

 
TIME’s list of Best Inventions features 200 groundbreaking inventions including life-mapping artificial intelligence, diamonds made from excess carbon in the air, and the most powerful telescope ever – inventions that are changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible. We’re proud to be among this list of innovators.


See the full list of TIME Best Inventions of 2022: TIME Magazine Best Inventions of 2022

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2022 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards

November 2022

We are honored that three of our projects, the Holdsworth CenterMarfa Ranch, and Hotel Magdalena have been recognized with 2022 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards. These awards honor the best nationally and internationally significant new buildings, landscape architecture, and planning projects designed and built by the world’s leading architects.

 

The Holdsworth Center is a first-of-its-kind facility dedicated to the training and leadership development of Texas public educators demonstrating that "Education Holds Worth" and that educators deserve a place where they can grow their skills. Designed to encourage feelings of health and wellness, 84% of the site is dedicated to beneficial open spaces that also support water, wildlife, and ecological conservation. This living-learning programming thoughtfully connects visitors to the native landscape and neighboring Lake Austin in a healthy, sustainable, and resilient campus setting. 

 

Situated amongst the vast west Texas skies, majestic mountains, and active desert landscape, Marfa Ranch reflects Marfa’s unique environment and its artistic community. Embracing its ever-changing desert landscape by having the rooms centered around the courtyard, the structures connect users to the surrounding landscape. The house is built of two-foot-thick walls of rammed earth, placing regional materials at the forefront as a nod to how the area’s earliest structures were built while creating a high thermal mass ideal for Marfa’s climate.

 

Hotel Magdalena is an inviting oasis situated in one of Austin's most beloved neighborhoods. Its deeply shaded porches, inviting outdoor spaces and lushly planted terraces were thoughtfully designed to draw guests outdoors, connecting them with the courtyards and landscape. The result is a unique experience that pays homage to Hill Country Lake houses and the slopes of natural artesian springs in the region, where Texans have historically sought relief from the harsh summer heat. The Hotel has become a showcase of innovative design, sustainability, and sense of place within its urban environment. 

 

Click here to learn more about the 2022 American Architecture Awards.  

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Trinity University Celebrates Grand Opening of Dicke Hall

October 2022

We recently celebrated the grand opening of Trinity University’s Dicke Hall, the first mass timber higher education building in San Antonio. Combining beauty and design performance with a unique structural system, Dicke Hall reduces the building’s impact on the environment while expressing the university’s forward-looking commitment to innovation in liberal arts education and environmental stewardship. The craft of the building’s mass timber structure pays homage to the campus’s mid-century modern design heritage, extending Trinity’s tradition of sustainable building into the 21st century by incorporating the latest green solutions, sustainability practices, and construction methods.

Dicke Hall’s sustainability features include a combination of passive and active system strategies that, based on projected data, will result in an estimated 90% energy savings over baseline expectations for a building of this type. By using mass timber, Dicke Hall reduces greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption while modeling responsible stewardship of the environment. The carbon sequestered by Dicke Hall’s mass timber structure is equivalent to 374 acres of U.S. forest land for one year. 98% of regularly occupied spaces have access to daylight and views to the outdoors, creating a vibrant, productive environment for Trinity’s home for the humanities

We were honored to be a part of the Trinity University Dicke Hall team with Turner South Texas, Rialto Studio, Integral Group, DCI Engineers, Intelligent Engineering Services, Datum Engineers, Martin/Martin, Inc., Design Think Consulting and Studio Lumina. 

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Join us at the 2022 AIA National Conference

June 2022

We are thrilled to be participating in the 2022 AIA Conference on Architecture in Chicago. Please join us for the following sessions: 

 

Building Design Cultures for Climate Action: Technology, Workflows & Teams

Wednesday, June 22 | 12 - 1:30 p.m. | McCormick Place, Room S404

Speakers: Dan Stine, AIA (Lake|Flato); Mark Herter, AIA (Centerbrook Architects & Planners); Jack Rusk (EHDD Architecture); Misha Semenov, AIA (Centerbrook Architects & Planners)

 

Lessons from Post-Occupancy Energy Evaluation

Thursday, June 22 | 2-3:30pm | McCormick Place, Room 2404

Lake|Flato Speakers: Sam Rusek, Assoc. AIA; Sunnie Diaz, AIA; Kate Sector, Assoc. AIA; Gus Starkey

 

Performing Beautifully: The COTE Top Ten Awards

Friday, June 24 | 2:00-3:30pm | McCormick Place, Room S105

Speakers: Lewis McNeel, AIA (Lake|Flato); Margaret Cavenaugh, AIA (Studio Gang); Betsy del Monte, FAIA (Cameron MacAllister Group); Billie Faircloth, AIA (KieranTimberlake/COTE) 

 

ILFI Just Label: Transforming Your Company with Transparency

Saturday, June 25 | 8:30 - 9:30am | McCormick Place, Room S102

Speakers: Heather Holdridge, Assoc. AIA (Lake|Flato); Amy Gilbertson, FAIA (Trivers) 

 

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Announcing our 2022 Firm Advancements

June 2022

We are excited to announce our firm’s 2022 promotions, including five new Partners and three Associate Partners. Our growing next generation of leaders will continue to carry out Lake|Flato’s commitment to thoughtful architecture that responds to both human and environmental needs. Please join us in congratulating our staff for their passionate commitment to design excellence!

 

Partners 

Adrianna Swindle, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP BD+C 

Chris Krajcer, AIA, NCARB 

Joseph Benjamin, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

Matt Wallace, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

Todd Wascher, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

 

Associate Partners 

Graham Beach, AIA 

Laura Kaupp Jensen, AIA 

 

Chief of Operations 

Scott Lelieur, AIA 

 

Project Architects 

Jenna Steinbeck, AIA, IIDA 

Melina Phillips, AIA, LEED AP 

Sunnie Diaz, AIA, LEED AP 

 

Project Directors 

Cameron Goldsmith 

Casey Nelson, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Dan Carter, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

James Thoreen, Associate AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

John Taylor Schaffhauser, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

Nyssa Sherazee, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

Sam Xu, AIA 

 

Project Designers 

Catherine St-Pierre 

Darby Prendergast, AIA, NCARB, WELL AP 

Joseph Mills, AIA 

Lindsay Belliveau 

Sameer Rayyan, LEED AP BD+C 

 

Marketing Manager 

Lyanne Guarecuco 

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Texas Society of Architects Design Awards

May 2022

We are honored that four of our projects have been recognized with 2022 AIA TxA Design Awards from the Texas Society of Architects: Courtyard House, Marfa Ranch, Hotel Magdalena and House Zero (in collaboration with ICON).

These awards are a testament to the creativity and ingenuity our design teams dedicate to our clients and the environments where we work. We are deeply grateful for the recognition. Congratulations to all 2022 honorees! To learn more about the 2022 Texas Society of Architects Design Award recipients, click here.

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Knox College Whitcomb Art Center Awarded AIA COTE Top Ten Award

April 2022

We are honored the Knox College Whitcomb Art Center has been recognized with a 2022 AIA Committee on 
the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Award
. The AIA COTE Top Ten Awards recognize ten innovative projects each year for their integration of design excellence with environmental performance. Lake|Flato leads the industry with 14 COTE Top Ten Awards, demonstrating our commitment to design performance & sustainability.

 

The Whitcomb Art Center creates a new home for the Knox College art program and serves as a civic bridging agent welcoming in and melding together the diverse cultural identities of the neighborhoods and districts surrounding the site: Knox’s traditional academic campus, Galesburg’s central business core, and the adjacent industrial warehouse district. The facility integrates the studio art and art history departments of Knox College in a new, light-filled, cost-effective, modern building anchored by a landscaped event and work courtyard. Inside, a series of double height studios, galleries, and critique spaces foster a vibrant interdisciplinary art community and program. 

 

With an extremely lean project budget, the Whitcomb Art Center reflects the self-described scrappy and unconventional community of Knox’s art department. Within this lean mindset every design decision contributes to multiple performance goals in a highly integrated way. The building is a high-performing workhorse shaped for efficient daylight capture and made of simple industrial materials assembled in surprising and elegant ways.

 

"This is a traditional form re-imagined in a unique and refreshing way. By using economical steel frame and reusing finishes, they made something special, taking a brown field and restoring the natural ecology, done beautifully. ”

- 2022 COTE Top Ten Award Jury 

 

Upon completion, the Whitcomb Art Center received LEED Gold certification. With the new facility up and running, art department chair Mark Holmes summarizes his department’s collective sense of success with the project and what the design team set out to do:

 

"A year or so into its life, the building has a palpable effect on students and faculty alike. For one thing, everyone loves to be there  we all spend more time helping or talking informally with students and just indulging our interest in the light, space, and shapes. The amount of daylight is a huge benefit."

 

Congratulations to the 2022 COTE Top Ten honorees! To see all 2022 AIA COTE Top Ten projects, click here.

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Grand Opening: U.S. Federal Courthouse in San Antonio

April 2022

Dedicated on April 20th, the San Antonio Federal Courthouse creates a dignified civic presence that celebrates San Antonio’s history and culture. The design team worked with the City of San Antonio, the General Services Administration (GSA), and several other Federal Agencies over twelve years to design a GSA Design Excellence project that represents the civic importance of a new federal courthouse while capturing the cultural identity of San Antonio. Delivering one of the nation’s most economically designed federal courthouses involved balancing the art of architecture with the science of high performance design. Currently on track to achieve LEED Gold certification, the Courthouse provides a compact footprint with light-filled courtrooms, workplaces, and a multi-purpose public atrium which maximize daylight for the benefit of building users. Energy-efficient and resource-conserving strategies reduce energy costs by 21% and provide an indoor water savings of 30%.

 

“In our built environment,” shares Lead Designer David Lake, “courthouses remain that rare example of an iconic symbol for justice and integrity housed in a uniquely ordered architectural presence. In this courthouse, the design team crafted a courthouse whose clarity of purpose and permanence were strengthened by the presence of light.”

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2022 WoodWorks Wood Design Awards

April 2022

Informed by our ethos of designing in partnership with the land, Lake|Flato’s commitment to mass timber construction is a carbon-fighting strategy that celebrates the timeless qualities of beauty, nature, and craft. Three Lake|Flato projects — Hotel Magdalena in Austin, Texas, the University of Denver Burwell Center for Career Achievement in Denver, Colorado, and The Soto in San Antonio, Texas— are recipients of WoodWorks’ 2022 U.S. Wood Design Awards, which will be honored at the International Mass Timber Conference occurring this spring in Portland. These projects showcase the natural warmth and resiliency of wood while honoring the unique history and context of each site. To learn more about the 2022 WoodWorks Wood Design Award recipients, click here

 

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House Zero Opens Its Doors to Future of 3D Printed Housing

March 2022

LakeFlato and ICON, one of the nation’s leaders in advanced construction technologies, have unveiled House Zero, the first large-scale house completed as part of ICON's new Exploration Series of 3D-printed homes. 

Lake|Flato collaborated intensely with ICON’s software developers, robotics engineers and material scientists to create a new set of architectural strategies for printed concrete construction. In addition to demonstrating the benefits of 3D construction as an innovative building technology, House Zero is also a compelling and climate-responsive home connecting its inhabitants to a native Texas landscape in Austin’s urban context. Built for permanence and resilience, the house’s flexible plan supports ever-evolving patterns of living and aging-in-place that a family experiences over the course of a lifetime. 

“This welcoming, practical home design expands the performance capabilities of 3D printing technology and is unlike any other home we’ve designed to date,” shares Ashley Heeren, an Associate at Lake|Flato. “Designed for net-zero energy and to push the limit of additive manufacturing, House Zero also responds to the climate gracefully, celebrates materials and an innovative assembly process, and uses simple moves to accomplish many things at once,” states Lewis McNeel, an Associate Partner at Lake|Flato.

Tours of House Zero will be available during SXSW on March 13-14, 2022 from 9am to 6pm. Sign up today!