Ted Flato
San Antonio, Texas
Ted Flato learns from his predecessors and from both architectural and industrial vernacular constructions, which respond directly to climate and material culture. Lake | Flato believes that designing for a particular place is inherently sustainable, and their projects span from the domestic to the public scale. They believe that the making of courtyard and landscape spaces is equally important to the making of enclosed spaces, and they construct naturally ventilated and shaded spaces that engage their inhabitants in the qualities of the local climate. Their projects reusing local waste products, such as recycled oil-field pipe, achieve the quality of being irreducible and essential. They state that, “architecture should be rooted in its particular place in the world…Using local materials and partnering with the best local craftsmen, we sought to create buildings that are tactile and modern, environmentally responsible and authentic, artful and crafted.” Their work recognizes that the fundamental elements of architecture change only very slowly over time, and that how people have inhabited the local landscape in the past remains of greatest relevance today.
