Craig W. Hartman is SOM’s Consulting Partner based in the firm’s San Francisco office. His work with SOM in the United States, Europe, and Asia, while extremely broad in its typology — ranging from entire urban districts to singular works of commercial, civic, and cultural architecture — consistently adheres to a rigorous modern vocabulary that acknowledges issues of place involving climate, physical and cultural landscape, and historic precedent.
Hartman joined SOM’s Chicago office in 1973 and served as a design partner in the firm’s Houston and Washington, D.C., offices before coming to San Francisco, where he has established the West Coast architecture group as one of the region’s premier design practices. Just as SOM is a multifaceted practice encompassing architecture, planning, engineering, interiors, and graphic design, Hartman’s work demonstrates how, through interdisciplinary collaboration, projects can achieve innovation in design and building performance.
Hartman’s work has been recognized with more than 220 awards for design, which, in addition to 10 national American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Awards, includes multiple Gold LEED® certifications, two current LEED® Platinum projects, and AIA awards for environmental sustainability at Treasure Island and the University of California, Merced. He also received a Federal Design Achievement Award in the 2000 Presidential Design Awards Program.
In 2001, Hartman became the youngest recipient of the Maybeck Award, an award presented periodically by the AIA to an individual California architect in recognition of “lifetime achievement in architectural design.” During the dedication ceremony for The Cathedral of Christ the Light in September 2008, the Vatican’s Knighthood for Service to Society (St. Sylvester) was bestowed upon Hartman by Pope Benedictus XVI. In 2010 The Catholic University of America selected Hartman as the Walton Distinguished Critic in Design. Hartman also received Honorary Doctorate of the Arts degrees from Ball State University, in 2009, and from DePaul University, in 2018. In 2016, the American Academy in Rome honored Hartman for his contributions to the field by inviting him to serve as a William Bernoudy Architect in Residence.
