Donlyn Lyndon’s Berkeley architectural firm had been in business for about an hour, he liked to say, when business walked in the door that would shape his practice for the next 60 years.
The prospective client was the developer of 10 miles of craggy California coastline in Sonoma County. The job, pitched to Lyndon and his fellow partners from architecture school at Princeton in the early 1960s, was to design a condominium complex on a former sheep ranch that would serve as a prototype and showcase for all future construction at an ecocentric vacation home project to be called the Sea Ranch.
That first big commission to the firm Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker, or MLTW, opened on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean in 1965, and was on its way to multiple prestigious design and architecture awards, including listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It is known internationally for design elements including sloping rooflines that follow the hillside, as well as use of redwood and other natural, unpainted materials…