Action & Diversity

We encourage diversity and action in many ways.

We promote cultural representation throughout the studio. With this comes a variety of interests and ideals where we encourage our team members to be stewards through personal passion, participatory leadership, and volunteerism. By ‘doing’ together, we seek to improve our internal and external fabric and develop deep, meaningful connections in and out of the workplace.

Action Days and internal ‘community groups’ are hosted to support local environmental and social needs that are reflective of our team’s interests. This framework reinforces our mission to inspire our community through impactful design and extends beyond the physicality of buildings; we equally seek to serve our community in purposeful and humanistic ways.

Community Involvement

Good mentors listen, guide, encourage, support, challenge and inspire. Our team members fuel their personal passions in teaching and mentoring to cultivate the next generation of design talent and serve as a positive influence in the professional trajectory of others.
The annual CANstruction design competition supports the Second Harvest Food Bank in their mission to provide healthy, warm meals to families in need during the holiday season. Our Schenkel Shultz spirit shows in time, talent and fiscal contributions each year; it is one of our studio's revered traditions.
Quarterly meal serves at the Coalition for the Homeless is a company tradition and a way we connect as a team for the betterment of our larger community.
Our studio's mission to inspire our community through impactful design goes beyond building design but also services through action and volunteerism.
For the holiday season, our team came together at the local annual “We Care” event where we helped local youth make custom canvas paintings to gift family members.
In the wake of the Hurricane Ian disaster, our team spearheaded clean-ups and citizen rescues, resulting in over 800 clean-ups of residences and businesses throughout the Gulf Coast community.

Each personal experience is like a fingerprint, and unique to each of our team members. We encourage capturing those perspectives to inform our design process, participate in social and environmental issues and expand design engagement to the larger community and locales we serve.

Culture

Core Values
Communication
Integrity
Respect
Teamwork
Accountability
Leadership
Design Excellence

Sustainability

1. We believe in the AIA 2023 Commitment Pledge.

Behavior must change.

Understand how your building works and how your usage supports conservation. Knowledge affects positive change.

We measure.

Actions affect everything. We measure our design’s energy use and employ tactics to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from operations. We strive to reduce the embodied carbon, through smart materials selection.

Lead by example.

We understand that our choices affect our community. Impactful design reduces the burden of carbon intensive systems and products.

High performance buildings minimize impact.

Our focus is the design of a tight envelope that is insulated properly and continuously lowers heat loss in a warm humid climate. We also select appropriate glazing and study the effects of our design choices to keep our buildings cool.

2. We believe in the AIA Materials Pledge.

Better materials are required. We help promote the use of non-toxic, natural materials that are regenerative and do no harm to inhabitants and manufacturers. Our product selections are power to help create a safe, circular economy.

3. We adhere to the AIA Framework for Design Excellence.

Raise our consciousness.

Our identity is tied to our people, community and the world. Understanding how we affect and are affected by design is crucial to making good design.

Create place.

Design is rooted in place. Understanding location from the energy available to the community it serves; leads to local and global change.

Connect people to ideas.

We educate our employees, clients and community on impactful design choices. We empower them to make the right decisions regarding energy use, material selection and waste reduction.

Stewardship Action Plan Download