Architect Betsy del Monte has a message for the entities honoring her at the Oct. 6 Impact Dallas Gala: She’s not dead and she’s not done.
The Dallas chapter of American Institute of Architects and Architecture and Design Foundation selected del Monte for this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented Oct. 6 at the Thompson Hotel.
When del Monte got the call that she was named the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, she said she was “blown away.”
“I said, ‘There must be some mistake. I’m not dead, and I’m certainly not done yet,’” del Monte said in an interview with Daltxrealestate.com from her home in Asheville, North Carolina.
The AIA Dallas’ Lifetime Achievement award is the highest honor given to an architect by the organization, the nation’s sixth-largest AIA chapter. Del Monte was selected for her enduring dedication to sustainability, resiliency, and climate impact, organizers said.
Last year’s gala raised $172,000 for scholarships, programming, and community projects. Organizers hope to net $200,000 at this year’s event, co-chaired by Macey Davis and Dan Noble. Tickets are available through the Impact Dallas website.
Lifelong Achiever
Del Monte began her career as a design architect with Philip Johnson Architects in New York and later became principal and director of sustainability at Dallas-based The Beck Group. She later developed the curriculum for a master’s degree in the Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University.
“I feel like I’ve had three careers,” she said.
Decades ago, architects didn’t take environmental concerns as seriously, so del Monte began to pave the way as green building, sustainability, and LEED design principles became more mainstream.
“While we were in New York, we had three children,” del Monte said. “Things got very interesting. Then we moved to Texas, and things got interesting again.”
The del Montes lived on the northern edge of University Park in the City of Dallas and raised identical twin boys and a daughter, all of whom have an interest in architecture and will join Betsy and her husband Rick at the Oct. 6 gala.
“I started out in Dallas with Urban Architecture as a project manager,” she said. “I was doing things I hadn’t done before. I had a very steep learning curve. I became a principal and had to at least pretend like I knew what was going on.”
Urban Architecture merged with Beck and del Monte was swiftly thrust into a large-scale national architecture and construction firm. It was around this time she heard Ray Anderson speak about sustainability.
“It made sense,” she said. “I needed to learn more about that. I tried to put as much of that as I could into the work I was doing, and my partners suggested I give myself the title of director of sustainability. I became solely focused on sustainability and green building.”
In 2007, she was approached by the dean of engineering at SMU to develop a master’s degree program.
“This was my third career,” del Monte said. “To teach, you really have to learn a lot. I had to step up my game to teach others the things that I wanted to know. I got frustrated with the impact that any single project could have. Your impact ends at your property line. That’s when I got involved in sustainable planning and climate mitigation. That took me to national AIA involvement and an even broader playground.”
Del Monte now lives in Asheville, works as a sustainability consultant with Cameron McAllister, and has created R&B Architecture with her husband (a fourth career?), but she still teaches at SMU and visits Dallas often.
Pressing Forward
Even though del Monte will take the stage on Oct. 6 to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award, her career is far from over.
She continues to be a leading voice in sustainable architecture and climate impact.
“There are a lot of clients who don’t yet understand the urgency,” she said. “They think they can’t afford it. We can’t afford not to do it. We can’t afford the amount of money we pay into climate disasters. It’s in the billions every year. We’re paying with our own lives in terms of the damage we have to face and the threat to our land values. This can get ugly. We’re looking at the issue of equity. The people that have caused the environmental damage and have benefited economically are not the ones suffering the most.”
Del Monte’s role as an adviser is “not to be doom and gloom,” she added.
“People are tired of hearing that,” she said. “I have to be a cheerleader. I have to say that there is a lot we can do and a lot of benefits we can get from addressing these issues.”
Joining forces with her sister Dr. Susan Mims, CEO of the Dogwood Health Trust, del Monte is now tackling the impact of the built environment on public health.
And although the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient has moved on in a geographical sense, she remains grateful for her time in Dallas.
“Dallas has been an amazing place for me to spend part of my 40-year career,” she said. “When we moved there, I realized it was so open to people who are willing to do hard work. There’s room for innovation. A lot of people were very accommodating and kind to invite us to the party, so to speak. It was a great place to raise kids and a great place to have a career.”
