Design Performance
The Dogrun
a place to share ideas
Applying for B Corp certification is a comprehensive process that, for Lake|Flato, took a team effort that was years in the making. Beyond rigorously assessing our business operations, B Corp certification has helped us refine how we measure the impact of our work on the wellbeing of our employees, our community, and the environment through quantifiable initiatives and outcomes. To contextualize how being a B Corporation animates our firm’s mission and guides our decision-making, we interviewed three firm leaders who oversee our environmental performance initiatives and equity, diversity, and...
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...
We are excited to announce the release of the AIA Climate Action Business Playbook. This resource was created by Lake|Flato , Buro Happold , Sustainable Performance Institute , unabridged Architecture . Project Team The project team included: Heather Holdridge , Director of Design Performance, Lake|Flato Dan Stine , Director of Design Technology, Lake|Flato Aurora Jensen , Embodied Carbon Lead, Brightworks Sustainability Varun Kohli , AVP - Real Properties, Battery Park City Authority Barbra BatShalom , Founder & CEO, Sustainable Performance Institute Allison Anderson , Principal,...
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...
As an architectural design firm that makes a concerted effort to incorporate sustainable design goals into all our projects, Lake|Flato uses many tools to challenge our assumptions and validate decisions. For efficiency, we also look for ways to streamline our efforts and even democratize workflows such that design teams might accomplish their own analysis without relying on, and possibly waiting for, a specialist to do it for them. To this end, an important part of implementing a new tool or workflow is to verify the accuracy of the results. This post will, at a high level, outline our early...
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 (...
This May 19th-23rd, hundreds of academic researchers and design practitioners will gather virtually for the 52 nd annual Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) conference to share new research-based knowledge about the built environment, with a focus this year on just environments. Presentations in the past have covered topics as wide-ranging as design technology, sustainability art, ecodistricts, and workplace design, with most work addressing some aspect of the climate crisis, wellness and/or equity. Besides allowing fun glimpses into countless ongoing research efforts, EDRA...
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...
