United by their particular interest in how Architecture works best when it responds to the site context, design sensibilities, and functionality, Dan Fletcher and Phil Hardoin have since developed their niche in the architectural community when they formed Fletcher + Hardoin in 1988.
Putting their capabilities and understanding of Architectural principles together, they create exceptional site-responsive and timeless pieces that form lasting visual and emotional impacts, unconstrained by architectural styles or trends. With a small team of just under 10, Fletcher and Hardoin believe in quality over quantity, with the utmost attention to detail, and begin working on each project by seeing it as a challenge; a dream of their client, to be achieved in the most serene of manners. They then create intensive solutions by developing an appreciation of the sense of place, ensuring that the form, interior, and landscape design complements, integrates with, and most importantly, enhances its context. It is thus, no wonder that this fresh approach has won them over 10 awards and immense recognition over such a short time, the Gold Nugget Grand Award and American Institute of Architects Monterey Bay Chapter Award of Merit, to name a few.
Here are a few of their most remarkable works.
1. Carmel Point Residence 2
Location: Carmel, CA
A breathtaking experience focusing upon the grand oceanic views across the site, the Carmel Point Residence is a successful response to its landlocked context. A humble architectural style that highlights the usage of straight lines, depth, inside-out connectivity, and the materiality of the raw nature of the structure, ensures that the residents can form a meaningful relationship with the ocean, its movement, and sounds, at all times of the day. The minimalist grey for the exterior allows the architecture to bow down in admiration towards the beauty of nature, while the subtle yellows and browns, and the light textures in the interior are symbolic of the sunset. The Carmel Point Residence is the one project that demonstrates the great ability of Fletcher and Hardoin to create a calm, yet experiential, gathering house for a family of multiple generations.
2. Santa Lucia Preserve Residence
Location: Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA
A house that opens up to bring the outside to the inside, Santa Lucia Preserve Residence ensures that every room is a part of its context. The simplistic ceiling-to-floor windows, minimalist framing, and views opening to every orientation capture the vistas and provide the natural landscape an opening to the interior. The planning responds to the site, opening up as though flowing across from one end to the other. The subdued colours, rawness, and materiality of the materials, alongside the varying levels of heights, provide opportunities for the users to explore the space as he may, to be able to answer to different aspects of the beauty of nature in each space. With extended slabs and angled roofing, the house appears to be floating in the woods unobtrusively, creating for a very mindful, anti-consumerist experience for its residents.
3. Pebble Beach Residence
Location: Pebble Beach, CA
6Pebble Beach Residence ©www.fletcherhardoin.com/portfolio/
A beach house experience in itself, with the Pebble Beach Residence, Fletcher, and Hardoin ensures it is a world of its own from the inside as much as it is towards its surroundings. Seeming as only a single-story house from the outside, the design provides the serene element of surprise as it opens up more and more as one moves towards the beach. Respecting the site contours with varying levels in the layout planning as well the sectional heights, the project zooms in on its response to each activity being carried out within it. The careful placement of the open windows allows for a multidimensional visual experience of the sea, designing a conscious effort of how the residents flow around the spaces.
4. Carmel Valley Residence
Location: Carmel Valley, CA
Located amid heavy foliage, a multi award-winning modern design, the Carmel Valley Residence is nothing short of a marvel in itself. The architects have incorporated a clever usage of lines and angles in the form, layout, and overall experience. Creating a unique sense of connectivity, the layout goes beyond the typical use of end-to-end walls for separation, but rather has partition walls allowing for space definition. The exterior of the residence is unlike any experience provided in the interior and has a rugged, grey barrel roll feel which opens into earthy tones of warm yellows and browns on the inside. The interesting fusion of geometry in the architectural elements is also seen in the doors and windows, particularly the half-arched clerestory windows, which ensure that the residence establish an ephemeral relationship with the nature outside.
5. Wine County Retreat
Location: San Luis Obispo County, CA
Characterized by Spanish Colonial Architecture, the Wine County Retreat reflects the sunny and sandy context it is situated in. The retreat greatly symbolizes the stronghold of architectural styles and elements of the architects as they incorporate rounded arches, square-based columns, terracotta, pitched red-tile roofing, and rich decorative details throughout the interior and exterior, respecting the unique heritage, but also ensuring to venerate the surrounding environment as well.
6. Big Sur Residence
Location: Big Sur, CA
Situated on the edge of a cliff, the architects ensure the residence does not impede the highly unusual site conditions but rather, it hides in the trees and allows the natural landscape to engulf it within itself. The strong use of angular elements, beams, windows and trusses, and linear planning oriented towards the vast ocean creates a visual experience that brings the surrounding context inside at all times of the day.
7. Atherton Residence
Location: Atherton, CA
Perhaps the most distinctive in all of Fletcher and Hardoin’s projects, the Atherton Residence is a clear inspiration of the classical style. The heavy usage of columns, cornices, domes, pitched roofs, and French doors and windows appears the primary focus of the project. The experience is directed to the interior, where the elusive incorporation of chamfered corners, rounded ceilings and windows add softness and lightness to the otherwise weighty experience.
8. Carmel Point Residence
Location: Carmel, CA
Another one of the very distinctive works of Fletcher and Hardoin, the first Carmel Point residence responds unapologetically to its surroundings and provides for a very fulfilling experience from the interior with the integration of varying levels, angles, and forms of the windows and openings. The curved slabs help direct the focus towards the landscape and provide an alternate suggestion for the expression in response to the container-like exterior of the form. The architects play with different levels, allowing a multidimensional circulation throughout thereby relaxing the rigidity of the otherwise form.
9. Fattoria Villa Saletta Borgo Hotel
Location: Palaia, Tuscany, Italy
Located in Tuscany, Italy, the Fattoria Villa is a beautiful amalgamation of the Italian style with architecture. The high ceilings, wooden louvers, arched opening, cornices, small windows, and earthy tones show how particular the architects were in respecting the distinguishing Italian heritage but also allowing for a very wholesome, intimate and fulfilling experience.
