Knowles Architect Joins Zero Foodprint
Better Buildings, Better Food.
Zero Foodprint welcomes our newest ZFP Member, Knowles Architect! Principal and Founder Gavin Knowles carefully integrates “connection to the natural world and long-term land stewardship” into each of his designs. Whether he’s considering the carbon footprint of a residence or the sustainable merits of cork exterior cladding, Gavin thoughtfully examines the long-term impacts of his designs to build beautiful buildings, better.
Although Knowles Architect was founded just recently in 2023, you may already be familiar with prolific portfolio, including multiple projects for fellow ZFP member Flour + Water.
“Our guiding mission as a design firm is to help people connect with their place in the world and to help them make their place better over time. This means working with the local ecosystem on a micro scale, and working hard to address the challenges of climate change. While there is lots of opportunity for this in our work using healthy and carbon-sequestering building materials, farmers have an even greater ability to sequester carbon and a very direct interest in the health of their land. We are proud to be able to support Zero Foodprint with 1% of our revenue and directly support farmers pursuing good land stewardship, better soil health, and better food.”
-Gavin Knowles
About Knowles Architect, Inc.
“Knowles Architect, Inc. is a full-service architecture firm focused on the highly personalized and place-based design of residences, restaurants, and other facilities which celebrate their connection to the natural world and long-term land stewardship. Any building, landscape, or object we create needs to be better than the things we must destroy in order to create it. The bare minimum for any architectural act should be that it makes a place better for having been built. Truly great architecture goes a step further. It finds the heart of a place and celebrates it. Whatever site (be it rural, urban, or something in between) and whatever the program (be it a home, a restaurant, or something else entirely) we take particular care to get to know you, and your place, and how you might inhabit and improve upon that place in the world.
“How will your building make your place in the world better over time? Healthier over time? There are a whole host of design techniques and tools we use which typically fall under the generalized header of “sustainable design” or “green design” to achieve this. Designing for daylight, thermal comfort, passive and active ventilation, rainwater collection, wastewater reuse, net-zero energy use (or net positive generation!), carbon-sequestering building materials, disaster resilience, and native habitat creation are all goals we strive for on every project in some way or another. These tools and techniques are critical (and thankfully now in many cases required by code), but they are not the end goal themselves. We use them to create a design and ultimately a building that will enhance the life of those who inhabit it - whether that is you the owner, or your employees, or your customers - by connecting them to the natural world, and its rhythms, and the life that it supports.”
-Gavin Knowles
R. Gavin Knowles
Principal + Founder
About Zero Foodprint Membership
Zero Foodprint began as an effort for restaurants to reduce and eventually zero out their climate impacts. After crunching all the numbers, one thing was clear: the vast majority of the emissions inherent in a meal happen before the ingredients ever make it to the restaurant or processing facility. Food and beverage production accounts for more than 1/3 of global emissions - but it doesn’t have to be that way.
We can change the way that food is grown. By directly funding practices like compost application, managed grazing, and cover-cropping, Zero Foodprint across industries members team up with farmers to create healthier soil, which grow better food while restoring the climate.
Zero Foodprint (ZFP) is a nonprofit organization restoring the climate, one acre at a time. We believe that by regenerating soil, local food economies can play a critical role in reversing the global climate crisis. We work with food and beverage businesses, philanthropy, and government to bring the next dollar to implement the next regenerative practice on the next acre. This regenerative economy benefits every person who grows food, every person who sells food, and every person on this planet who eats food.
