Lake Flato is a San Antonio architecture and interiors firm that David Lake and Ted Flato founded in 1984. It’s based on Third Street downtown, with offices in Austin and Portland, Oregon, and a staff of more than 150. Its stated aim is to connect people to nature through sustainable buildings, and its work runs from houses and ranches to campuses, museums, civic buildings and the redevelopment of San Antonio’s Pearl Brewery. The firm was the 2004 AIA Firm of the Year, and its founders received the 2024 AIA Gold Medal. At San Antonio International Airport, Lake Flato is the design architect working with master architect Corgan on Terminal C, the roughly $1.6 billion terminal Hensel Phelps is building as construction manager at risk.
The firm’s sustainability record is unusually measurable. Lake Flato holds 17 AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten awards, the longest-running American program recognising projects that pair design quality with documented environmental performance, and it reports project data publicly through the 2030 Challenge and the AIA 2030 Commitment. At AIA26 the firm took four national design awards, including its seventeenth COTE Top Ten and an Interior Architecture award.
How that happens internally is worth noting for owners with performance targets. An in-house design performance team pairs sustainable design leads with design technology leads and works across the whole practice rather than project by project, which is how energy, daylight and carbon analysis gets into documentation instead of arriving as a consultant’s report at the end.
Governance is part of the pitch. Lake Flato is among a small group of leading American architecture firms certified as a B Corporation, a standard that audits social and environmental performance alongside profit, and it also carries the International Living Future Institute’s JUST label for organisational transparency on pay, equity and employee treatment.
The practice runs from three addresses: 311 Third Street in San Antonio, 1224 East 12th Street in Austin, and a Northwest office at 1300 SE Stark Street in Portland, Oregon. Project types are broad – houses and ranches, K-12 and higher education, civic and cultural buildings, science and technology, hospitality, and district-scale work – and the firm argues explicitly that sustainable design is achievable regardless of budget, size or place, pointing to its COTE Top Ten portfolio as the proof.
Stated values start with listening. The firm says it begins every project by listening to the place, the client and the community, treating authentic and healthy design as something that requires engagement and investigation rather than a signature style. It shares knowledge through writing, teaching and speaking, and maintains a publicly available design performance action plan.
Practical note for prospective clients: business development, media and student material requests each route to named individuals on the contact page, and lunch-and-learn CEU inquiries have separate contacts for the San Antonio and Austin studios.
