Ellen Mitchell, AIA, continues her interviews about what sustainability means in rural America.
This article is part of an interview series that Mitchell is publishing to bring more voices into the sustainability conversation.
In some parts of the country, the renewable energy revolution can be very abstract and invisible. Not so along the Red River, which is the dividing line between Texas and Oklahoma. Here, it’s wind turbines as far as the eye can see and solar arrays spreading across pastureland. It’s small, rural school districts receiving new tax revenue and neighbors debating what development means for the land they love. It’s also increasingly a reminder that sustainability isn’t always experienced as a theoretical climate debate. Sometimes it’s experienced as a fundamental change to a community’s sense of place.
I was reminded of that in a recent conversation with architect Joe Ross of GBA Architects, who lives and practices in Wichita Falls, Texas. Ross has a background that includes graduate school at Harvard’s GSD and time at a leading design firm in Dallas. But ultimately, he chose to return to the area known as Texoma to be closer to family and for professional continuity that surprised me. The work, he told me, isn’t as different as people might assume. What changes most is the context: the constraints, the pace and the way people prioritize what matters.
I went into our conversation expecting to hear from Ross that the sustainability discussion can be politically fraught. After all, this part of Northwest Texas sits close to the fault lines of energy culture – a history of oil and gas, rural land ownership, conservative politics combined with the undeniable rise of utility-scale wind and solar. But Ross’s perspective was far more nuanced and, honestly, more hopeful than I might have expected. Sustainability, in his experience, isn’t automatically controversial. In fact, he described it as a generally neutral, if not positive, term. The political lightning rod is more often tied to the term “climate” – especially when introduced in a way that feels like an identity rather than a problem to solve. That distinction – between sustainability as a practical matter and climate as a polarizing signal – became one of the most revealing themes of our conversation.
Renewables are About Land Use, Not Just Energy Policy
When Ross talks about wind and solar, he doesn’t talk about them as symbols. He talks about them as projects that create real impacts and force real tradeoffs. The conversation in this part of Texas cannot be boiled down to being “for or against” renewables. It’s more grounded than that. It’s about how large-scale infrastructure changes the landscape, who it benefits, and what it disrupts.
One of Ross’s most interesting observations is that solar and wind don’t face the same perception. Solar seems to have “a better lane to run in” because it is less visually disruptive, easier to ignore from a distance and perhaps most importantly to the communities in which it sits, provides a sense of reversibility. A solar field has a lifespan and once decommissioned, the fallow land can be restored back to agricultural uses. That “sunset provision” along with money set aside for deconstruction, helps calm people who are worried about the permanence of transformation.
Wind is harder. It’s taller, more visible and virtually impossible to ignore – especially with its blinking red lights disrupting the dark sky. Even people who appreciate the economic benefits may feel that wind turbines change the character of the place in a way that solar does not. In other words, acceptance isn’t just about energy – it’s about how visible, permanent and personal that energy feels.
Conservation as “Do No Harm”
Another theme that quickly emerged was around conservation, which Ross described as a widely shared value in more rural communities. People care deeply about the land, and the baseline expectation is simple: just don’t make things worse.
That “do no harm” philosophy may sound modest compared to the urgency of global emission reductions. But it’s also a powerful point of entry. It’s an ethic that doesn’t require ideological alignment. It doesn’t demand that everyone share the same worldview about climate change. It asks for something more immediate and more universal; respect for what is already there.
In Ross’s framing, that respect shapes both environmental conversations and design decisions. It shows up in how communities respond to large-scale development. It shows up in how clients think about open space. And it shows up, perhaps most tangibly, in the way people value existing buildings.
Reuse Isn’t a Sustainability Strategy – It’s a Practical One
When I asked Ross what sustainability meant for his practice, I expected to hear about resource conservation primarily. Instead, one of the strongest threads in his interview was around building reuse – not branded as a sustainability move but as a practical and often emotionally driven choice.
Ross described clients with buildings that, in another context, might be dismissed as “too far gone.” But in his world, there is a different instinct: let’s keep as much as we can. He made a point that stood out for its simplicity: saving a brick is saving a brick. That line carries an entire worldview. It doesn’t need carbon accounting to justify it. It’s an anti-waste mantra that is largely missing in today’s single-serve culture. It’s a poignant refusal to discard what still holds value.
In the more rural parts of Texas, reuse is often more successful precisely because it’s voluntary. Owners want it – they choose it. They feel attached to their buildings and that emotional attachment outweighs the potential additional costs. It is that emotional buy-in that can be the difference between a project that survives budget pressures and one that collapses under them. People are more willing to stretch when they feel their building matters.
Sustainability as Process, Not Performance
When Ross described how he talks to clients about sustainability, it wasn’t framed as persuasion, but rather process. He described asking “innocent” exploratory questions – What’s your budget? How many square feet? And somewhere in the middle: what are your sustainability goals?
Not as a demand or a statement of ideology. Just a question that creates room for the client to communicate what matters to them. For some clients, that might mean renewable energy. For others water conservation, efficient planning or simply not overbuilding. Ross’s practice shows that sustainability often advances through small procedural shifts; a formal documentation of project goals, a kickoff meeting that includes consultants, a specification that introduces construction waste management.
What I took away from talking to Ross was a vision of sustainability as stewardship – less about an ideology and more about staying grounded in a sense of place. He is practicing in a region where “progress” is impossible to ignore. Wind and solar aren’t abstract ideas here; they’re a reality that brings revenue and opportunity while also altering views, land use and the feel of home. That tension – between conserving what people love and living amid large-scale transformation – may be one of the most honest sustainability stories we can tell.
Yet at the same time, Ross’s perspective reminds me that the future of sustainable design won’t be shaped only by bold new technologies. It will also be shaped by the quieter decisions: saving a brick, keeping a building, and respecting what’s already there. And in places like Texoma, that kind of thinking may be the most durable form of progress we have.