04/24/2026
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.
Lyndon himself occupied Unit One in Condominium One, which was supposed to be followed by Condominiums Two through Nine. But the idea of clustering residential units together to “live lightly on the land,” as the saying went, ran into the economic reality of buyer preferences in the vacation real estate market. Condo construction ended with Condominium Two, as most demand was for individual homes that fit into a naturalistic landscape master plan that emphasized common outdoor space.
Among several thousand stand-alone homes built at the Sea Ranch, Lyndon designed nine, including one for his brother and one for himself after he moved out of Condominium One. Along the way, he outlived the developer who hired him; Al Boeke of Oceanic Properties; the lead landscape architect, Lawrence Halprin; the Sea Ranch Store designer, Joe Esherick; and the graphic and logo designer, Bobbie Stuffacher Solomon. Lyndon also outlived his partners at MLTW, Charles Moore, William Turnbull Jr. and Richard Whitaker.
The architect and UC Berkeley professor helped shape the iconic Sonoma County community and spent decades refining its landscape-driven design philosophy.
