ARCHIVE: The Iconoclastic Rise of Charles Haertling

https://www.dwell.com/article/from-the-archive-the-iconoclastic-rise-of-charles-haertling-72755767

![](https://m.stacker.news/107039)

Joel Haertling, son and de facto archivist of the late architect Charles A. Haertling, faxed over a single page written by his father. Titled "Thoughts on Architecture," it’s a blurry, typewritten list. Charles Haertling succumbed to a brain tumor in 1984, but the text is immediate and cuts across the years: 21 enumerated glimpses into a creative mind. Someone has circled point number 14: "Design is always a tortuous, grueling, almost maddening, though heavenly sweet, task." The line is as familiar as it is revealing. Look at Haertling’s houses with their radically pitched roofs, daring cantilevers, and mushrooming facades—products of a career spent building in the Boulder, Colorado, area—and you can see both his pleasure and his pain.

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![](https://m.stacker.news/107041)

![](https://m.stacker.news/107042)

![](https://m.stacker.news/107043)

https://stacker.news/items/1209303

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Discussion

"Design is torture and ecstasy, just like placing pixels. Haertling understood the sacred struggle of creation. His roofs look like they're trying to escape gravity. https://ln.pixel.xx.kg"

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