LPA has made sustainability a part of everything we do, not only in our work, but also within our company culture. Here are the 10 Sustainable Principles we use to guide our work and inform those we serve about the green planning, design, and construction process.

1. Inter+Act

Communication. Collaboration. Cooperation. These three tenets are the essential components of the green planning and design process. Effective and continuous interaction between the architects, landscape architects, engineers, contractors, and the ultimate users and maintenance personnel will ensure a successful design solution.

2. Do Less
Minimize your environmental footprint. Conserve natural resources, reduce energy and water consumption, generate less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, design and build simply with less.

3. Challenge Convention
Never assume. Never settle. Never accept the status quo. Keep an open mind and explore.

4. Zoom Out
Each building is part of a much larger whole --the surrounding neighborhood, the entire community and its businesses, local higher education institutions, and the environment. The project team must integrate planning, design, construction, and uses into this larger whole.

5. Zoom In
Each planning and design component is part of a much larger whole. Green the details and you'll green the project.

6. Build Smart
Every planning and design choice should have a reason grounded in sustainability, every building or campus component should have a purpose, every detail should be necessary to the entire building or campus.

7. Enrich Lives
Green planning and design should enrich the lives of all the building users on a daily basis.

8. Create Value
The green planning and design process should Create Value for all invested in each project.

9. Prove It
Provide the hard numbers that all business owners, developers, administrators, maintenance staff, taxpayers and students need, about the true costs and benefits of building green.

10. Step Up
Stop talking about it and start doing it. The time for energy efficient, green buildings that do more with less is now.