We believe truly sustainable, regenerative design begins at a project’s inception and continues on after its completion.

Our comprehensive approach to regenerative design takes a holistic vision of each project’s lifecycle. From operational and embodied carbon reduction and resource management and efficiency, to environmental stewardship and occupant health and wellness, sustainability is baked into our design process. Templates for site analysis and goal setting, checklists for each design phase, and check-ins at project milestones ingrain sustainable design into our office culture, not solely on a project-by-project basis. Each project team establishes & targets a set of stretch goals that advance the greater vision.

The leaders of our Sustainability Department offer a wealth of knowledge in crafting regenerative, site-sensitive design, master planning, and deep research into the latest in materiality and building science + systems.

In 2003, our first project, House Ocho set the tone for our work with a site sensitive, sustainable design, winning an AIASF Sustainability Award and a Green Roof Award. In 2010, we designed our first electric, Net-Zero Energy Home, The Santa Cruz Haus, which earned LEED Platinum certification. With subsequent projects like Caterpillar House, the first LEED Platinum Custom Home on California’s Central Coast, and The Farm, a sustainable urban home with grey and rain water filtrations systems, we have continuously refined our goals and raised expectations for performance and efficiency. Since our studio’s inception, our acute focus on sustainability has attracted a team of like-minded architects and consultants, as well as clients & collaborators who are passionate about regenerative design and environmental stewardship.

We’re proud of how far we’ve come. Today, our innovative office-wide carbon budget for residential projects tracks and measures each home’s predicted embodied and operational carbon emissions from design through post-occupancy. As signatories of the AIA 2030 Commitment, our studio is working towards a carbon neutral future. Using advanced software like Tally and Climate Studio, we’re able to perform in-depth site analyses, daylight studies, and lighting intensity models to inform our design process.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) launched the 2030 Commitment in 2009, with the goal of achieving carbon-neutral buildings by the year 2030. This means not only achieving net-zero energy but also eliminating the use of fossil fuels. Architecture 2030 has set reduction targets based on a 2003 CBECS baseline to serve as a measuring tool for progress, with the target energy use reducing every five years.

Feldman Architecture made the pledge in 2016 and, as a means to track and document progress towards reduction goals, began reporting performance data to the AIA‘s online database, the Design Data Exchange (DDX). The reporting process revealed that the majority of our projects, most aiming only to meet the requirements of California’s strict Energy Code, were in the 40%-50% reduction range.

In 2023 The AIA By the Numbers report detailing the impact of the AIA 2030 Commitment, FA was one of the 31 signatories nationally who reported 80% pEUI reduction target across their entire portfolio.

In 2024, our project portfolio reported a 93.82% average EUI reduction, which, when measured against our 80% reduction goal for 2023, far exceeded our goal. 10 out of 13 of our projects as they were designed were predicted to meet our 2030 commitment.

In 2025, our project portfolio reported a 87.91% average EUI reduction, which fell just slightly below our new, ambitious 2025 90% reduction goal. 21 out of our studio's 38 reported projects are currently predicted to meet their 2030 commitment as they are designed. ⁠

The built environment is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s our responsibility to take action to reduce the carbon footprint of our work. To this end, in the spring of 2023, we launched our Carbon Budget initiative for residential projects, which took aim at each project’s operational and embodied carbon emissions. Initially, we set an aggressive target of 100 metric-tons (tonnes) per home and developed the first version of our carbon dashboard to quantify projected emissions throughout each design phase.

Over the last three years, we've integrated more efficient tools and systems that have greatly improved our processes, more accurately deploying software like Climate Studio for daylighting and energy modeling to measure operational carbon, and Tally to track embodied carbon. Since the launch of this initiative, we’ve implemented the carbon dashboard on 12 projects, learning a lot along the way.

As our processes have evolved, so have our goalposts. In 2026, we’re working to transition away from the fixed 100 metric ton carbon budget toward a standardized Net-Zero operational carbon target & 20 kg CO₂e/sf embodied carbon target for all projects. The original 100-tonne benchmark served as a helpful starting point, but measuring embodied carbon with a per-square-foot metric allows us to draw clearer comparisons between our projects, no matter their size or typology, and better aligns with the industry standard as well as ILFI/Zero Carbon frameworks. With the design teams having limited control over project square footage, larger projects were struggling to meet the 100-tonne goal, while smaller projects were achieving the goal with minimal effort. The per-square-foot metric allows for a more direct comparison between projects of different sizes and establishes a standardized metric of success that every project can strive to achieve.

We acknowledge that square footage is one of the most impactful drivers of carbon reduction and will continue to communicate to clients the importance of building less by right-sizing program and designing efficient layouts with multi-use spaces. Additionally, Feldman Architecture will purchase carbon offsets to make up the deficit on projects that fail to meet their target goals. We invite our clients to participate in this journey and purchase the remainder of the offsets to get us to Zero Carbon on their project.

Our studio is excited to continue to educate ourselves, our consultants, and our clients as we fine-tune our process to model and analyze operational and embodied carbon emissions with greater accuracy. We look forward to learning more from our new set of goalposts and improving our systems along the way.

A Resilient Future

We can no longer rely on past climatic data to inform our decisions: rather, we must design with foresight to ensure a resilient and sustainable future. Preparing for future natural disasters is urgent and requires a fundamental shift in thinking about the ways in which we build, especially given the fragility of our critical services and infrastructure.

Although no one design can be immune to all risks, we can integrate preventative solutions into our built environment. We must take our cues from the site and its surrounding landscape and use fire-resistant and non-toxic materials that are found naturally and locally, in particular those inherently most resilient to the specific threats faced in the region.

We tap proven and innovative technologies to incorporate structural and mechanical building components and systems that mitigate risks to life and property, in particular those that promote the integrity of the buildings as a whole.

Our designs utilize resiliency strategies like on-site power generation + storage, fire resistant construction, on site water collection, graywater + rain water systems, and tight building envelopes.