Lake|Flato

Lake|Flato: Nature | Place | Craft | Restraint  Lake|Flato Architects University of Texas Press, November 2020Hardcover | 9-1/2 x 12 inches | 256 pages | 422 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1477321416 | $45.00PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: Few design firms are as celebrated as San Antonio–based Lake|Flato Architects, the winners of more than three hundred international, national, and regional awards, including the American Institute of Architects’ Firm of the Year Award. This book features the firm’s large-scale pursuits: arresting, airy, and sustainable public buildings. Featuring more than three hundred stunning color photographs, Lake|Flato explores sixteen recent projects from across the United States. The images—of Mississippi’s rustic-modern and ecologically resilient Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the crystalline Witte Museum, the sinuous Confluence Park structures in San Antonio, and other spaces—are grouped by themes reflecting the designers’ ethos: nature, place, craft, and restraint. Architects Kengo Kuma, David Miller, Warren T. Byrd Jr., Stefanos Polyzoides, Vivian Loftness, and Lance Hosey provide guest commentary, delving into the works and themes and connecting them to Lake|Flato’s larger mission of creating a meaningful architecture that brings people into contact with the natural environment while facilitating culture and community. Lake|Flato Architects is an award-winning design firm, founded in San Antonio in 1984. ... As architects, teachers, environmental stewards, and community advocates, they strive to elevate the public’s appreciation of architecture and foster the education of the next generation of architects. The firm has previously published three monographs: Lake|Flato, Buildings & Landscapes, and Lake|Flato Houses. REFERRAL LINKS:    dDAB COMMENTARY: The latest monograph on San Antonio's much celebrated Lake|Flato Architects presents sixteen buildings in four thematic chapters that are clearly expressed in the book's subtitle: Nature | Place | Craft | Restraint. One of these buildings breaks free from the four-part structure to stand on its own at the front of the book: the Austin Public Library. The building, designed by a joint venture of Lake|Flato and Shepley Bulfinch, celebrated its grand opening in October 2017. As the main library in a large Texas city, and accordingly an important civic commission, it's no surprise the monograph gives the building a special position. But the ideas and intentions of the design, as well as its thorough documentation across twenty pages, is not exceptional: it is the norm for the firm and for this monograph. When I think of Lake|Flato, I tend to think of small buildings in natural contexts, lots of wood, porous facades, and other features that exude green architecture. No wonder one of the project categories on the firm's website is Eco-Conservation, consisting of buildings like the World Birding Center and the Naples Botanical Garden Visitor Center. The latter is in the monograph, fittingly in the first chapter, Nature, alongside a few other projects situated along the Gulf Coast, from Florida to Texas. One of them, the Josey Pavilion, exhibits the firm's green ideals, as it is the first building in Texas to be Living Building certified. Those ideals are also found in the considerably larger Austin Public Library, spelled out in graphics (third spread below) on the reduced power and energy uses stemming from the design's rainwater harvesting system, rooftop PVs, and daylighting strategies. Beyond a sensitivity to context and commendable sustainability strategies, one aspect of Lake|Flato Architects that comes to the fore in the monograph is how they consider the people who use the buildings they design. Architectural photography has a long tradition of omitting people from the frame or using long exposures to turn them into blurs. Nature | Place | Craft | Restraint is different, with an abundance of bodies and faces gracing the hundreds of photographs. Not only are photos sans people in the minority, most of the photos with people don't appear to be staged just to serve as entourage. This says a couple things to me: the firm is waiting to photograph their buildings until after they've handed over to the client and are occupied; and therefore the firm is genuinely interested in how well their buildings work as public spaces. Architect David Miller, of the like-minded firm Miller Hull, says it well in his introduction: "Lake|Flato's architecture teaches us how to be better human beings. It is inspiring to occupants, engaging to the senses, and life-enhancing. Their buildings [...] ask for our active participation as users, for a sense of engagement and belonging." The photos of Lake|Flato's humanist architecture make me appreciate their work all the more, but coming now, in the midst of a pandemic, they also make me pine for the social interactions that the best architecture enriches. SPREADS: