Haertling often made efforts to harmoniously integrate his buildings with their physical environments. For his strongly Usonian-influenced Menkick House (1970), he incorporated a local rock outcropping into the structure of the home, echoing Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. He would also occasionally explore motifs inherent to a project's geographical and cultural environment. For his unbuilt Tambor Guest House project in Costa Rica (1973), he based his design upon traditional thatch hut architecture. For another unbuilt project, the waterfront Chart House Restaurant in Mamaroneck, New York (1982), Haertling used forms reminiscent of wood pier pilings, boats and sails in his sketches.
