Ted Flato, FAIA, is a Keynote Speaker for the 2024 AIA Utah Fall Conference. He will be speaking at 9:00 a.m. We chatted with him about his passions and hopes for the field. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

What is your current passion?
My passions are all over the place these days. Within the office, I enjoy working with a host of younger architects on a myriad of projects in a huge range of locations and climates. I see these “new exciting projects” as opportunities to explore how their unique conditions will allow us to push our “practical/sustainable design philosophy” in new directions (some radically different, some subtle refinements) and to leverage the unique perspectives of this talented younger generation of architects and clients. And I am anxious and passionate about maintaining “firm wide ownership” in our work, and I see, as we continue to grow (at 150 plus architects in two offices and a number of satellite work conditions), how critical cross-disciplinary design reviews and office-wide design discussions are for real cross-pollination and group ownership is for our firm’s continued success.

Beyond the office, I am very focused on the environmental challenges facing our rivers and springs in central Texas. Coming from a ranching family (my German ancestors were some of the first ranchers in the central part of Texas) with a place on the headwaters of the Nueces River that has been in the my family since the 30s, I have been extremely concerned with the triple threat facing our water resources in central Texas: climate change (a four-year drought in our part of the state), a rapidly expanding and thirsty population in the Austin/San Antonio area, and state government that prioritizes political posturing over real policy making. With those challenges in mind, I started a landowners group, the Headwaters Alliance, to bring a politically disparate group of “river stewards” together to address “our common unifying concern” — that our central Texas rivers and springs, the lifeblood of the hill country, may not be flowing for future generations unless we do something. We are making some success on a regional basis, where solutions and problem-solving trump politics, and, hopefully, will have a trickle-up effect within the state before it is too late. But in any case, we are using these real challenges to bring people together. It is a long journey, but important to get the ball rolling.

What do you wish you knew when you were a young practitioner?
It is a long game, the making of good architecture. It takes a lot of patience, collaboration and thoughtful persuasion to move opportunities to their best possible place. And remember, it is incremental, each project and collaboration grows into the next, and though it is important to be passionate and push hard for “what is right,” it is equally important not to overthink your opportunities. Because if you think of it as a long game, you will have many new opportunities in the future.

Where do you hope the field is going, and how can we help it get there?
We must, as architects, be part of the global effort to solve climate change. We cannot afford to get it wrong, we must be striving to not only make thoughtful sustainable and adaptable buildings, but we should be making advocates of our clients and fellow architects in the process. The days of building buildings that are torn down in 20 years because they are out of style, not adaptable or are not sustainable for the long haul, are over. The world desperately needs our leadership.

Ted Flato, FAIA, has received critical acclaim for his straight-forward regional designs which incorporate indigenous building forms and materials and respond to the context of their unique landscapes. With partner David Lake, he was named 2024’s Gold Medal recipient, the highest honor conferred by the American Institute of Architects.

By applying sustainable strategies to a wide variety of building types and scales, Ted seeks to conserve energy and natural resources while creating healthy built environments. His interest in a myriad of building systems has resulted in projects ranging from mass timber, prefabrication and 3D printing, among other building systems.

In addition to his notable residential projects for Lake|Flato, Ted’s commercial work includes the transformation of a former Air Force base into a 550,000 sq. ft. regenerative campus for Arizona Polytechnic University, the LEED Platinum Shangri La Gardens in Orange, Texas, and a new mass timber academic building for Trinity University that pays homage to its mid-century campus, designed by mentor and Texas modernist, O’Neil Ford.

Ted’s commitment to sustainable environments does not end with his designs. His notoriety has earned him invitations to lecture across the nation on subjects such as healthy buildings and sustainable strategies, and healthy office culture, among many other topics.