Architects as translators: Sustainability in the Texas Hill Country

Mitchell is the 2026 chair of the Committee on the Environment. This article is part of a series that Mitchell hopes will bring more voices to the sustainability conversation. 

Located deep in the heart of Texas where prairies begin to give way to rugged limestone cliffs and clear rivers cut through dry land, the Texas Hill Country is easy to romanticize. But practicing architecture here means respecting limits—water is not guaranteed, and heat is not theoretical. Often, the gap between what a client wants and what their project’s budget can deliver is as expansive as the wide-open sky. 

When sustainability advocates like me talk about opportunities in the built environment, we often start with things like EUI targets, decarbonization strategies, and building performance metrics. But in the Texas Hill Country, sustainability doesn’t show up in acronyms or checklists but rather as practical questions: How do we keep this building comfortable? How do we make it last? How do we use less water? And how do we do all of that within a modest budget? 

To understand how architects in this part of Texas navigate those questions, I spoke with two AIA members living and working in the Hill Country: Brady Dietert, AIA, and Sara Freudensprung, AIA. They have different perspectives and unique ways of talking about sustainability, but they share a practical yet powerful focus on what works. 

When "saving the world" isn't a strategy
Brady Dietert, AIA, Dietert Design Studio, Leakey, Texas

Dietert is refreshingly candid about where he thinks the sustainability community goes wrong. Not because he doesn’t care about the environment—he clearly does—but because he has seen what happens when good intentions turn into points of division. 

In his view, one of the fastest ways to lose a client is to treat sustainability as a moral test: a pass/fail measure of whether someone is doing the “right thing.” He described a shift in his own thinking that struck me in its honesty, remarking, “I used to believe that saving the world was more important than serving the client.” But over time, he realized something more nuanced and more useful: He can’t move a client toward his perspective if he doesn’t first demonstrate that he cares about them. 

That line hit me because it reframes sustainability as based on relationships instead of technical challenges. If a client feels judged, they stop listening. If they feel unheard, they stop trusting. And if they feel like sustainability is going to be used as a lever to push them into decisions they are unsure of, the conversation ends before it begins.

Dietert’s point isn’t that architects should abdicate responsibility to address sustainability. It was that we have to earn that influence. We must start by understanding our client’s financial, cultural, and emotional circumstances before we begin prescribing solutions. In rural contexts like the Hill Country, sustainability cannot be framed as a luxury add-on. It has to be framed as what it often truly represents: durability, comfort, long-term value, and common sense. 

Quiet influence and the power of “ask twice” 
Sara Freudensprung, AIA, Simply Architecture, Kerrville, Texas 

Freudensprung’s approach is quieter but no less disciplined. In my conversation with her, the calm steadiness of her practice stood out. She didn’t talk about sustainability as a separate identity but rather as a responsibility embedded in everyday decisions around siting, shading, insulation, water harvesting, and long-term maintenance. The strategies aren’t flashy, but they are foundational. Where Dietert is willing to name what’s broken in the broader sustainability discourse, Freudensprung shows what it looks like to keep moving forward anyway. 

Freudensprung described a way of working with clients that I found both practical and surprisingly freeing. She’ll raise an issue—such as using better insulation, native plants, or stormwater cisterns—and explain why it matters. Her policy is to raise the issue twice, and if she still doesn’t gain traction with the client, she moves on.

I particularly appreciate this philosophy because she isn’t shying away from the hard conversations, but she is also not turning every decision into a battle or every compromise into a failure. Her persistence is real but measured. She holds the line where it matters yet doesn’t compromise her role as a trusted advisor by pushing too hard.  

In smaller communities such as those in the Hill Country, Freudensprung’s philosophy matters. Clients here are often close to the land in a way that’s difficult to capture in national conversations. They are unlikely to show up asking for a “sustainable” building, but they understand water in both its scarcity and its destructive power. They understand heat. They understand what it means to use the resources that you have and maintain them over time. Freudensprung meets them there without needing to perform sustainability as a brand.

Listening to both Dietert and Freudensprung, a few common themes emerged: 

It is cost, not ideology, that drives the sustainability conversation. 

Both Dietert and Freudensprung described cost as the critical point where the sustainability conversation lives or dies. When budgets are tight, the most successful strategies are the ones that deliver multiple benefits: comfort, durability, lower operating costs, reduced consumption. Sustainability framed as sacrifice rarely lands. Sustainability framed as value often does. 

Client care is the precondition for change. 

Dietert’s reflection about serving the client before trying to “save the world” is not a retreat from environmental responsibility. It’s an acknowledgement that change happens through trust. Freudensprung’s “ask twice, then move on” approach is another version of the same idea: You can guide, but you can’t force. And if you lose the relationship, you lose the project and any chance to make things better. 

The most effective approach is often quiet. 

Neither architect described sustainability as a dramatic gesture. It’s often small and incremental. It’s the accumulation of better defaults, passive design strategies, smarter siting, and long-term thinking. In a world that tends to value the new and innovative, this kind of practical application can be overlooked. But it may be the most durable kind of progress. 

I started this interview series because I believe that we need a wider circle of voices in the sustainability conversation, especially voices from places where environmental realities directly shape life but where the language of sustainability can be irrelevant. Dietert and Freudensprung reminded me that the future of sustainable design may depend less on new technology and more on practiced empathy: listening closely, choosing wisely, and making the best decisions we can, one project at a time. 

Ellen Mitchell, AIA, is the director of sustainability & applied research at LPA Design Studios.