Lake|Flato Architects

do hospitality projects, office buildings, civic/ cultural facilities, and corporate headquarters. We design large-scale master plans like the historic Pearl Brewery complex here in San Antonio. We also have our Eco-Conservation studio, which concentrates on nature conservation and nature centers.” Despite the varying kinds of design activities involved, there’s a common thread uniting these projects: each team employs an integrated design approach to synthesize goals for design, sustainability, engagement, and equity – identifying priorities and building momentum from the very beginning of the project. Lake|Flato employees choose strategies and technologies that have the maximum impact, through a process involving design workshops that overlay environmental context onto sustainable building programs. “It’s really a conscious effort to reduce our impact on the environment,” Wascher says. “We always strive to think about different ways of building that are sustainable.” He goes on to explain how the traditional steel and concrete construction that shape much of our built environment have a massive carbon footprint: “When you think about the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., the building industry is responsible for almost a third of that pollution. What solution could we, as architects, provide to address that problem? The answer to that question is really why we moved into mass timber.” In addition to being a renewable resource with lower extraction and processing impacts than steel or concrete, the inherent aesthetic appeal of wood also makes it an attractive building material. “That’s the other reason we started using it,” Wascher says. “We were doing small homes that were beautiful and incorporated lots of naturalistic features. Wood being closer to that materiality, it gave the architecture more of a human touch. Ultimately, we wanted to bring Soto (Cavender) Building Courtesy of Erika Brown Photography