Designing the West: architect Ted Flato

A world-renowned architect who is shaping the look — and sustainability —  of the West is a Westerner himself.

This month Cowboys & Indians debuts a new column: "Designing the West." We'll look at buildings, gardens, objects, and ideas that enhance the rich and varied landscapes and lifestyles that we call Western.

We begin with Ted Flato, an award-winning architect whose name is synonymous with an honest, earthy modernism that harmoniously partners forward-thinking built environments with the natural environment. For San Antonio, Texas-based Flato, "green design" isn't a fad or a bandwagon he just jumped on. For years, he and his partner, David Lake, have considered sustainable design to be one of the most important goals our nation can actually achieve.

And his many award-winning projects prove it: From air barns for polo ponies to wetland walks through nature centers, from tricked-out ranch houses to enchanting mountain hideaways, Flato's projects have made him an architect after our own hearts.

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Flato received his B.A. in architecture from Stanford University in 1977 and has since received wide acclaim both nationally and internationally for his designs.

Not for nothing. Since founding Lake|Flato with partner David Lake in 1984, Flato and his San Antonio firm have garnered numerous national architecture awards for a design vision that considers not just sustainability, but also — and equally — land, light, craft, community, and open space.

In 2004 the American Institute of Architects awarded Lake|Flato the prestigious Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor an American architectural firm can receive. In the past three years, Lake|Flato has had three projects selected as Top Ten Green Projects by the AIA's Committee on the Environment, the premier award for sustainable design, and his recently completed nature center in East Texas — Shangri La Botanical Gardens — received a Platinum LEED rating, the first in Texas and on the Gulf Coast. The firm's second monograph, Buildings and Landscapes, was released in 2006.

We talked to Flato from his firm's offices in San Antonio about living well with the environment and building his best vision of the West.

Cowboys & Indians: How does the West inform or inspire your architecture?
Ted Flato: Having grown up in Texas, I'm used to places where the landscape is bigger than life. It's played a big role in how I think of buildings. Our work usually has a strong landscape component, and we do not draw a line between indoors and out. The diverse climate of the West, with its intense sun, cold winds, thunderstorms, and drought, has also had a significant impact on our design approach. Creating an architecture that adapts to those conditions is both challenging and inspiring. It's a big part of why I enjoy working in different landscapes and creating an architecture rooted where we work.

C&I: What other challenges does building in the West present?
Flato: In addition to the climate issues, working in more remote locations and getting materials there can also be a challenge. Yet I enjoy figuring out how to build in these particular places — taking advantage of the local materials and craftsmen of the area. Every place has its limitations, and leveraging what a particular area has to offer is critical. You might have great welders in some areas, great carpenters in others. Just thinking about the particular place you're working in — those are some things that are a little different in the West. Another challenge is the landscape; it's not always so forgiving. It's quite wide-open. Harsh landscape requires a contrasting "protected space." Sometimes this requires hunkering down like a "sodbuster," or at other times extending porches and trellises out for transition spaces. And sometimes it means creating a contrasting environment, a courtyard oasis. A really successful room is one that works for both [cold and warm] seasons, with a wall that blocks winds to the north, and with glass and generous overhangs on the south. Thoughtfully scaled overhangs keep the sun at bay during summer, but when the sun is at a lower angle in the winter, it is invited in for warmth. It comes down to borrowing ideas from earlier vernacular architecture when people couldn't afford to do it wrong. These early structures had to work with the weather since they didn't have air conditioning, and heating was a pretty precious thing.

C&I: You recently won the American Institute of Architects (AIA) COTE Top Ten Award for your green design of the Government Canyon Visitor Center in Helotes, Texas. What were the guiding principles for this project?
Flato: The preserve was created to protect San Antonio's aquifer, and the visitor center embodies this mission, celebrating the importance of rainwater. Its large, sloping roofs bring the water to a central basin — a buried concrete tank filled with rocks — and the water is then pumped into a raised tank to supply the irrigation to a lush green space around the building. The building, designed to be as sustainable as possible, uses very little energy. Since people are visiting an "outdoor" preserve, there is very little need for air conditioning. The main meeting/exhibition space is an open-air screened room with rolling barn doors to block off the cold winds or to open up and capture the cool prevailing breeze. The building has a very small carbon footprint. One of the things I like most about the design is that we built it out of recycled oil-field pipe. Having grown up in South Texas, a place with a lot of oil activity, and being fond of the ingenuity of ranchers who also use this material, we really pushed it. We used small 23/8-inch pipe. Where necessary, we would double it up and create trusses. I enjoyed the whole process of using a local resource and a local talent — welding — to make a very site-specific building.

C&I: How has the green movement affected other work you're taking on now?
Flato: It's always been a very big part of what we do. Our first projects were in the country, often on ranches, and our clients wanted to connect to the environment. Luckily, style took a back seat. We've always done buildings that were very energy-efficient. As we've developed, we've added more and more science to our design approach. With oil prices [fluctuating], the need for our type of work is stronger than ever. This is exactly the direction architecture should be following. Design should be thoughtful about energy usage, and a great byproduct is better buildings. Often the buildings we create are smaller, where all the spaces are well-utilized; often they have great outdoor spaces, and these principles can apply in any type of scale of building, from residential to large institutional. [In terms of renovating,] if you're going to add to an existing home, add spaces that might require less energy. One of the things that make for great living, even in cities, is outdoor rooms. They're using very little energy and they're delightful. Other renovation ideas: Get more efficient insulation. And try to collect rainwater off the roof by adding gutters and cisterns; there's immediate gratification because your garden is healthier and better.

C&I: What makes a perfect second home?
Flato: The ideal second home is in a different landscape than you're used to in order to give you a new perspective. It will be different for everyone. If you're a long way from the coast, then having a place on the coast is incredible. If you're in the flats, go into the hills. But most important, you should look forward to going there because the location is more refreshing — hotter, colder, whatever it takes. It simply needs to offer a different experience from your routine existence. A second home should be a place you always look forward to visiting. It must not be a burden. It should take advantage of the fact that you're only there for a particular time of year and should be closely connected to the outdoors — just one step beyond a tent, if you could do it, or many degrees beyond that, if that's what you need. Simply put, a second home should allow you to be closer to the environment. People often build more than they really need, and I'm hopeful this will change.

C&I: What are your favorite materials to build with?
Flato: Materials should be close at hand. The beauty of this approach is that it takes less energy to bring the materials to the site. Local materials make a project more connected to the place, and the craftsmen in an area are accustomed to using those materials. In the Hill Country of Texas, for instance, it's the limestone, which is easily quarried, easily worked, and readily available. In the more ranching parts of the country, where timber is a harder commodity to come by, it's steel and welding and the crafts that go along with that. In the forested mountains it's timber, and in the desert it's about using the earth more, doing earth-packed walls, rammed earth, or adobe. It's fun to celebrate what a particular place has to work with.

C&I: Your favorite buildings and architects?
Flato: Taliesin West by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Scottsdale. He built this place so his associates and students could have a comfortable winter work environment and be able to experience the beauty of the desert. They would go down in the winter and return to Wisconsin in the summer. My love of Taliesin is more about what it once was than what it is today. He built the walls out of the local stone — what Wright called DesertCrete [also called Desert Masonry] — half stone, half concrete. And the original buildings had light canvas roofs, which floated lightly above the earthbound walls. It's a combination of a cave and a nomad's dwelling. Beautiful stuff — very modern, too. The materials and strong geometry tied it to the rough desert landscape. The beautiful simplicity of Lou Kahn's work — the Kimbell [Art Museum] in Fort Worth, the Salk [Institute in La Jolla, California] — and Renzo Piano's well-crafted and equally simple and straightforward designs — these are also favorites.

C&I: What's your own dream home?
Flato: My dream home is one that is small, where you use every room and the rooms are quite flexible. You get to change the name of the room depending on the use to which you're putting it. You can call it a dining room when you need to use it that way. It's very efficient — you're using all the space all the time. There is a wonderful, marvelous main room, which can be opened up so it breathes and is part of the outdoors and closed when it is either too cold or too hot. The kitchen is the heart of the house, and it is part of this nice big room. And the adjacent garden is an extension of the house and allows the house to change with the seasons. The goal is to have a house that is very flexible and smart about how it can open up, so even the laziest of your family members will throw it open.

C&I: What is the ideal built environment of a future West?
Flato: The biggest challenge in the West is our cities. Land was always treated as something not so special — always available — and sprawl has been the mantra of most far-Western cities. Now our "undeveloped" land is very precious. Many of our Western cities have sacrificed livability — ease to travel to work, visit a neighbor, shop, and eat — for sprawl, and this is not a sustainable, healthy solution. We need to build in the city core so you don't have to constantly drive to get there. The process of building downtown, encouraging walking over driving, and reusing existing structures is a very important sustainable strategy. We need to be conservative with our resources, water, and energy. If oil prices [keep fluctuating], people will realize they can't drive these kinds of distances, and these developments on the edge of town will not be desirable. We should recycle and rehabilitate rather than tear down and "move on." Landscape is more and more precious and should be treated as such. It would be nice to see less development out in the country, and if it is done that it's done in a respectful manner.

C&I: How do we correct our past mistakes?
Flato: In the next 30 years, at the rate we've been tearing down, remodeling, and building new, about 75 percent of the built environment is going to be either new or renovated. It's an incredible opportunity to get it right. That means building in the right place — strengthening our cities and avoiding sprawl. But also, when we're doing our buildings, we need to build in a very sustainable way. We should be creating buildings that use about half as much energy — that isn't so hard. Then, as we start to get used to doing that, we should build facilities with the help of renewable energy that have a zero carbon footprint.

Filed under: Western, Home-Ranch