Exploring the Sustainability Conversation in Texas

LPA’s Ellen Mitchell is chair of AIA’s Committee on the Environment. In her series of chair letters, Mitchell, who is based in Dallas, has been engaging with AIA members practicing throughout Texas. As she wrote early on, “I want to highlight their stories — how they navigate constraints, address resilience and define sustainability in places where the word itself can be divisive. My hope is that by highlighting these voices, we can build a more inclusive understanding of sustainability — one acknowledging that climate action isn’t just a technical challenge, but also a cultural one. It calls on all of us, from the largest cities to the smallest towns, to rethink how we connect, how we communicate and how we collaborate.”

AIA Architect has been syndicating the series, and the first three installments can be found here:

• From Process to Practice: Sustainability in El Paso, Texas
• What it Means to Save a Brick: Sustainability in Texoma
• Architects as Translators: Sustainability in the Texas Hill Country

Mitchell’s latest piece, “Living on the Edge: Sustainability Along the Texas-Mexico Border,” published this week — and an excerpt follows below.

Few places are as misunderstood as the region along the Rio Grande River, which is the dividing line between Texas and Mexico. I’ll admit that, even as a native Texan, my actual experience here is limited to vacationing in the remote mountains of Big Bend National Park combined with childhood memories of crossing into Nuevo Laredo on day trips, back when border crossings were easy. Today, those memories have largely been replaced by a steady stream of headlines about illegal immigration, danger and division.

Through conversations with architects Guillermo Cavazos, AIA, and Jesse Miller, AIA, I got a glimpse beyond the headlines. I found a region defined less by division than by exchange—of people, ideas, materials and traditions. Cavazos and Miller represent different areas and offer different perspectives, yet in both discussions, sustainability emerged not as a movement or an ideology but as a continuous process of adapting to an unforgiving climate, increasing scarcity and constant change.

Building With Memory: Guillermo Cavazos, Cavazos Architects, Laredo, Texas

Cavazos has deep roots, both personally and professionally, in Laredo. A second-generation Mexican American, he comes from a family of architects: Both his father and brother practice in the region. Listening to him describe Laredo, you could be forgiven for concluding it is a small town. But in fact, Laredo is the nation’s largest inland port of entry and the primary commercial gateway between the U.S. and Mexico.

When I asked what sustainability looks like along the border, Cavazos spoke about architecture that has evolved over generations in response to the harsh climate. Thick masonry walls offer protection against the relentless heat. Courtyards create outdoor rooms shielded from the sun. Local clay brick, sandstone and mesquite beams gained favor because they are available and durable. Buildings are carefully oriented to catch the prevailing breezes.

I couldn’t help but smile at his statement, “North orientation is my best friend.” It was so simple but was a bridge between my career as a sustainability expert and his lived reality as a practicing architect. Long before architects like me began modeling solar heat gain or energy performance, builders in South Texas understood that orientation mattered.

What Cavazos described wasn’t nostalgia. It was accumulated knowledge—centuries of trial and error distilled down into architecture uniquely suited to its place.

Read the full article at AIA Architect.