LPA’s New Book Issues a Wake-Up Call: ‘No Excuses’ on Sustainable Design
Key Highlights
- LPA Design Studios′ book traces their 60-year history and emphasizes the importance of integrated, sustainable design practices.
- The authors advocate for breaking down silos among design disciplines to create high-performing, future-focused spaces.
- No Excuses serves as a call to action for the A&D industry to be bold, responsible, and committed to leaving a positive legacy.
LPA Design Studios, the Irvine, Calif.-based integrated architecture, design, and planning firm, is adding to the architecture and design (A&D) bookshelf with No Excuses: Integrated Design for a Sustainable Future, a new title now available for pre-order.
In the book, CEO Wendy Rogers and President Keith Hempel trace LPA’s 60-year journey from its humble beginnings in Leason Pomeroy’s garage to a national design practice with more than 500 employees, 10 disciplines, and seven studios.
But No Excuses is more than a retrospective: It’s a challenge to the A&D industry to engage in a more integrated approach to sustainable design.
A More Accountable, Integrated Design Process
Combining insights into the firm’s culture of shared responsibility and research-driven design process, No Excuses is hailed as a “call to action” by LPA. Rogers and Hempel offer a framework for firms across all roles responsible for the creation of the built environment.
Hempel told i+s, “We’ve been able to achieve results by making performance and sustainability part of the goal-setting process for every project, regardless of scale or budget. We always strive to offer clients options that demonstrate the value and opportunities of more efficient, resilient designs that are aligned with their larger vision and project constraints.”
Moving Beyond Silos to Build Smarter Spaces
The authors push back on siloed design models, showing how building and landscape architects, engineers, interior designers, and researchers work as a unified team to determine how sustainability, inclusivity, and performance considerations can achieve client goals. Their case studies—from commercial and civic buildings to schools and healthcare facilities—illustrate how this combined effort yields future-focused, high-performing spaces.
“One of our core beliefs is, we don’t do this alone,” Rogers told i+s. “Achieving results requires a collaborative, inclusive approach that brings all the stakeholders together and ensures every voice is heard.”
Additional Reads
A&D Leaders Align on Climate, Equity, and Innovation
In doing so, LPA aligns with other leading voices in the A&D community calling for a proactive, inventive, and equity-focused approach to meeting climate goals.
In the book’s foreword, Architecture 2030 founder Ed Mazria writes that no matter the project scale, “every decision counts, and sustainability can always be integrated into the design process.” While Mazria is referring specifically to the LPA approach, his conclusion that “shared commitment empowers LPA to transcend individual limitations and achieve collective success” applies to the wider design field as well.
During the run-up and week of NeoCon 2025, IIDA president Cheryl Durst and keynote speaker Annie Jean-Baptiste advocated for resourcefulness and co-creation, joining keynoter Alice Rawsthorn’s observations that exploration across disciplines offers novel solutions to design problems. They all upheld that stakeholder input and questioning who the space is intended to serve helps designers to realize environments that are accessible, functional, sustainable, and delightful.
In No Excuses, Hempel and Rogers state, “It’s our time as designers—designers of all disciplines—to step up and meet the moment. We must be bold and refuse to accept the norm. […] We have a responsibility to our communities and future generations to remain focused on our climate targets and leave the world a better place than we found it.”
At a moment when the A&D fields face growing pressure to do more with less—and do it sustainably—No Excuses offers both a vision and a playbook for what’s next.
No Excuses: Integrated Design for a Sustainable Future is available for preorder via Amazon before its release on September 16.
