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MONTECITO JOURNAL PRESENTS

SPRING | 2022

BRUCE HEAVIN’S

MOONSHOT Also Inside: STEVE JOBS HATED MONTECITO’S FAVORITE ARCHITECT BEHIND THE SCENES OF TV’S JEFFREY KLARIK & DAVID CRANE’S IDYLLIC WRITER’S RETREAT Plus: GEHRY RADZINER CORRIGAN APPLETON WINICK DONALDSON Other Rivs: MONACO! IBIZA! MOGADISHU?!?

More Than A Little Inside >

REPRESENTING EXCEPTIONAL PROPERTIES OF MONTECITO & SANTA BARBARA

MARSHA KOTLYAR ESTATE GROUP MontecitoFineEstates.com | Home@MKGroupMontecito.com | 805.565.4014 | Lic#01426886 © 2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

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PERKINSGROUPRE.COM The Perkins Group Real Estate | +1 805.265.0786 | team@perkinsgroupre.com | DRE: 01106512 ©2022 Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdraw without notice. No statement is made as to accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footages are approximate. Exact dimensions can be obtained by retaining the services of an architect or engineer. This is not intended to solicit property already listed.

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©2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. *Cristal ranked the #1 individual agent based on sales volume & units in the Santa Barbara MLS & the #1 individual agent worldwide for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices based on production for 2020 and 2021. Based on data as of 12/31/2021.

Volume 15 Issue 1

SPRING | 2022 CEO Gwyn Lurie gwyn@montecitojournal.net

President & COO Tim Buckley tim@montecitojournal.net

The Riv Founder & Editor Les Firestein les@montecitojournal.net Art Director Trent Watanabe trent@montecitojournal.net Magazine Managing Editor Gina Zondorak Terlinden Copy Editor Lily Buckley Harbin Photographer Edward Clynes Administration Jessikah Moran jmoran@montecitojournal.net VP Sales & Marketing Leanne R. Wood leanne@montecitojournal.net Account Managers Tanis Nelson: tanis@montecitojournal.net Susan Brooks: sue@montecitojournal.net Elizabeth Nadel: elizabeth@montecitojournal.net Liz Nightingale Contributors Elizabeth Daniels, Blue Gabor, Jonathan Haeber, Kelly Mahan Herrick, Rob Hill, Catherine McKinley, Steffie Nelson, Dewey Nicks, Ron Radziner, Jessica Ritz, Zach Rosen, Kevin Scanlon, Nicholas Schou, Keir Smith, Jeff Wing

Montecito JOURNAL

(glossy edition) is published by Montecito Journal Media Group, LLC. Corporate Offices located at 1206 Coast Village Circle, Suite G, Montecito, CA 93108 For distribution, subscription, advertising, or other inquiries: (805) 565-1860

TIM WALSH, YOUR TRUSTED AGENT TOP PRODUCER | 36+ YEARS IN REAL ESTATE | SPECIALIZING IN ESTATE VIEW PROPERTIES Client satisfaction is my #1 priority. The highest honor I could ever achieve is having past and current clients refer me to others.

TIM WALSH 805.259.8808 | TIM@VILLAGESITE.COM TIMWALSHMONTECITO.COM | DRE 00914713 All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

Shown: One of my Riviera listings which sold in 2021 for the highest sales price ever for Riviera homes on One acre or less. Exclusive Member of

Photo By Bernardo Grijalva

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CONTENTS: .50 – BETWEEN 2 (THOUSAND) FERNS

Show creators Jeffrey Klarik (Episodes) and David Crane (Friends) have made a fertile respite for their fertile imaginations right here in Montecito. Come tour their special sanctuary where the couple and writing partners talk about life, landscape, and LeBlanc with our editor.

.116 – RON RADZINER

The rock star-chitect is not just a designer and builder to the stars – he also writes for The Riv! One half of the design/build firm MarmolRadziner takes a deep dive into Montecito’s special sauce.

.66 – SUSTAINING A LEGACY

(PHOTO BY ARI MICHELSON)

Take a pill in Ibiza, a chill pill, on the ancient Spanish Riviera island of Ibiza, where architect Rolf Blakstad and his family’s multi-generational firm will design you the quintessential Balearic villa. There are no people in the photos – to make it easier to imagine yourself living there.

.76 – ARTIST TONI SCOTT

The UC Santa Barbara-trained multiracial creative takes a hard look at race via multimedia works that include carving, sculpting, painting, and more. The Riv visits the artist at her pastoral studio adjacent the UCSB campus.

.88 – D ID STEVE JOBS HATE MONTECITO’S MOST REVERED ARCHITECT?

Steve Jobs was obsessed with design but hated Santa Barbara’s beloved adopted son, architect George Washington Smith. The reigning dean of Spanish style Marc Appleton breaks it down with The Riv’s Les Firestein.

.102 – INDIGO

The color has tantalized humans like few other colors. Overseas, entire towns have been painted in the hue, and the Tuareg people dress in indigo from head to toe. But its history in America is also inextricably entwined with the story of Colonial slavery.

.124 – REBUILDING MOGADISHU

The capital of Somalia was once a beautiful Italianate riviera – and in some ways, still is. Meet some of the impressive rubble forces fighting to rebuild it, including Ilwad Elman, a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

.140 – MONTECITO’S MOONSHOT

A sneak peek at peak living: The Riv previews the most anticipated home unveiling in North America – owner Bruce Heavin and architect Robin Donaldson’s Hill House. Spoiler alert: You’re welcome, Montecito.

# 3 B E R KS H I R E H AT H AWAY AG E N T N AT I O N W I D E

N a n c y Ko g ev i n a s | 8 0 5 . 4 5 0 . 6 2 3 3 | M o n t e c i t o P ro p e r t i e s . c o m | D R E : 012 0 9 514 ©2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC . Information acquired from First American Title Insurance Company and is believed to be accurate but not guaranteed.

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

CONTENTS: .177 – FIDO 2.0.

Halt! Who goes there?! Your personal home security Robocop has arrived – and is available for purchase right now.

Artist and professional upcycler Gianni Vallino deconstructs then reconstructs castoff industrial detritus into lamps. His magic is that somehow the result is elegant.

.180– GREAT NEXTPECTATIONS

.218 – HIGH TIDE

World-class interior designer Timothy Corrigan has a long history with Montecito – and he’s making more of it every day. Corrigan recently turned his eye to redoing a storied Hedgerow manse for new clients. The twist? The house used to be his.

.194 – MONTE CARLO AND MONTECITO

Our sister riviera on the Côte d’Azur has common threads and surprising connections to Santa Barbara. The good works of the Princess Grace Foundation have resonated profoundly from the French Riviera to our American one.

.202 – MODEL CITIZEN

Santa Barbara-born and bred artist Taiana Giefer transforms Merino wool into intricate felt garments, tapestries, and murals. Her works have caught the eye of some of fashion’s top designers. And she’s as philanthropic as she is talented.

.210 – ACTUAL RESTORATION HARDWARE

Envisioning offshore vertical cannabis farming – vitamin Sea meets vitamin CBD.

.220 – NEAL FEAY ALUMINATI

Anything that can be done with aluminum can probably be done by Neal Feay and Alex Rasmussen. And if you don’t believe us, just ask Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Marc Newson, and Bentley Motors.

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CONTENTS: .230 – FROM TECH STYLE TO TEXTILE

Santa Barbara-bred clothing designer Ryan Shand worked in a bunch of startups, now she’s starting up her own thing – power clothing for women to make them feel like their own superheroes. Shazam!

.238 – COVID’S SILVER LINING

Astronauts used to quarantine in Airstreams, and you can, too. Santa Barbara’s special relationship with trailer life and our local artisans and hot rodders who are pimping them.

.252 – CHAIRWOMAN & CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARDS

Artist Inga Guzyte and carpenter Kirk Ponto have set up shop together – literally and figuratively.

.262 – MASTERPIECE MAKERS

Surrounded by impeccable and historic architecture, Montecito’s über talented design visionaries find their inspiration at every turn here on the American Riviera.

.272 – SANCTUARY STATE

Architect Barry Winick’s modern interpretation of the humble blufftop beach cottage.

.282 – REAL ESTATES

From five to $35 million, a plethora of dream homes waiting for their forever owners.

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CONTRIBUTORS: CATHERINE E. MCKINLEY, a Fulbright

Scholar and winner of numerous distinctions for her writing and curatorial work, is author of four critically acclaimed books, most recently The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women (Bloomsbury, 2021). McKinley has taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and at Columbia University. Her book Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World (Bloomsbury, 2012) is considered the most important tome written on that subject. She lives in New York City.

JESSICA RITZ is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer

who has contributed to Architectural Digest, Metropolis, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, C Magazine, Palm Springs Life, and American Way. Her reporting passions include architecture, interior design, art, and food.

WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED

hat person running on our cover is the owner and co-visionary of Hill House, Bruce Heavin. He’s running with a camera because he’s pretty much never without one. Having captured something like 50,000 images of the construction of his house, Heavin is a really good photographer, and many of his great photos grace these pages. The cover photograph and a bunch of others in that story, however, are by one of our favorite photographers, Dewey Nicks. Nicks has an incredible knack for capturing people in their most passionate, alive moments, and he did it again here in The Riv. So thank you, Dewey. In our cover shot, Heavin has protective booties on because his brand-new house was still drying. He’s probably running toward some shaft of light or shadow or unique cloud pattern that’s only going to be there for another 30 seconds. That’s how he is. You’ll learn a lot more about who Heavin is in the article “Montecito’s Moonshot.” You’ll also learn about his coconspirator, architect Robin Donaldson. And a lot of other people who worked on the project. We know you’ll enjoy it.

BLUE GABOR

is a music, fashion, and editorial photographer living in the foothills of Carpinteria. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone and C Magazine, as well as album covers and, most recently, a gigantic soundstage backdrop. She is currently working on a series of fine-art prints hand-tinted with naturally sourced pigments. When not capturing ethereal images on road trips with her family, she can be found learning how to hand-pollinate the cherimoya trees on the land she shares with her partner, two boys, and wolfdog, Echo.

Editor’s letter.

hat’s all the fuss about Montecito? There are certain small places that have an outsize influence in the world. Marfa (population 2,000), Texas, has an outsize influence in the art world. Monaco (population 39,000) has more Michelin stars per capita than just about anywhere. And then there’s Montecito. For some reason all these places begin with M. People who could live anywhere are increasingly clamoring to live in our American Riviera. Seven figures over asking is not uncommon. What our new magazine from the Montecito Journal is going to decode for you is how and why this is so. We’re going to show you the supermodel that is Montecito but without her makeup. We have the secret knock to all the best homes in the Hedgerow. We’re excited to show you around. There’s the American Riviera you know, and then there’s the American Riviera you don’t know. The Riv you know has coastal vistas off a vintage travel poster, a perfect climate, a strong Hollywood pedigree (for better and for worse), and year-round pink and purple sunsets that look as if decanted from a bottle of Syrah. Beyond the Spanish tile roofs, innovation has always found fertile ground in the 93108. There has always been a special appreciation for design here and don’t forget, before we got used to them, even George Washington Smith and Lutah Riggs were design disruptors back in their day (although Steve Jobs loathed them, see “Did Steve Jobs Hate Montecito’s Most Revered Architect?”). Not surprisingly, there has been a resurgence of interest in high design here now that Montecito real estate has become Bitcoin you can live in. Forward architectural design requires three main ingredients: (1) Inspiration. (2) Guts – the confidence to not feel compelled to run

BRUCE HEAVIN TURNS THE TABLES ON PHOTOGRAPHER DEWEY NICKS

with the crowd. And (3) The resources with which to execute said inspiration. This particular Riv happens to have an abundance of all three. Although The Riv also travels to other rivieri because we are citizens of the world – we impact other rivieri and they impact us. I’ve always had a theory that if shelter magazines – whose slenderness has followed their blandness – featured bold stories expressed in an interesting way, it’d be the journalistic equivalent of the Impossible Burger – that rare union that both satisfies and is sneakily nourishing at the same time. Look, we love shelter porn as much as the next guy or gal, but a lot of our stories are also wildly entertaining. So don’t just look at the pictures! Between these covers we are thrilled to reveal the most ballyhooed private residence in North America, for which we’re so grateful to Bruce Heavin and his architect Robin Donaldson. And I am oh so grateful to Bruce’s spouse Lynda Weinman for opening her heart and revealing that building a domicile is rarely a straight-up linear process – literally, figuratively, or spiritually. We understand why Bruce fell in love with his teacher. We are equally grateful to Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane for sharing what Jeffrey’s mom calls the garden God would have if He had money. They were true dolls for doing that. And for sharing their vulnerability and their perfect coupledom. Not to mention I feel so honored to tell the stories of the heroes rebuilding Mogadishu – once the riviera of Italian Somalia, largely envisioned by none other than Benito Mussolini! Who knew? There’s a lot of “who knew?” and gorgeousness and thoughtfulness and fun inside the pages of The Riv. Enjoy your Impossible Burger! Les Firestein Editor and Founder, The Riv.

BRUCE HEAVIN BEING PHOTOGRAPHED BY DEWEY NICKS. DEWEY WEARS LITTLE BOOTIES BECAUSE THE GARAGE FLOOR IS STILL DRYING – ALSO THEY’RE SO CUTE!

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JOHN A. SENER 805.331.7402 | ALYSSA A. JONES 805.755.8735 senerjones@villagesite.com | senerjonesassociates.com DRE 00978392/02096482

Time Honored Montecito Living “Casa Dorinda combines the magic of a historic estate, a lively social scene, and unparalleled private healthcare. Peace of mind has never been so inviting.”

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KNIGHT REAL ESTATE GROUP offers exceptional real estate representation with a lawyer’s insight and training. Our unique perspective affords our clients the comfort and security of knowing that one of their most important investments is in good hands. To learn more, visit KnightRealEstateGroup.com.

All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

H OT E L SA N TA BA R BA R A Sold for $41,900,000

E XP E R T IS E • H O NEST Y • DISCRETION J.J. Gobbell (805) 403-5785 JJ@EstatesOfSantaBarbara.com EstatesOfSantaBarbara.com 1170 Coast Village Road Montecito, CA 93108 DRE#02063124

FOR SALE $5,395,000

840 Toro Canyon Road Montecito, CA 93108

SOLD

Bella Vista • Sold for $7,375,000

SOLD

Paseo Del Descanso • Sold for $3,625,000

OVER $93 MILLION SOLD IN 2021 IN SANTA BARBARA COUNTY

© 2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate.

THANK YOU

2021

#1 Coldwell Banker Realty Agent Montecito/Santa Barbara 2 years in a row

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The property information herein is derived from various sources that may include, but not be limited to, county records and the Multiple Listing Service, and it may include approximations. Although the information is believed to be accurate, it is not warranted, and you should not rely upon it without personal verification. Affiliated real estate agents are independent contractor sales associates, not employees. ©2022 Coldwell Banker. All Rights Reserved. Coldwell Banker and the Coldwell Banker logos are trademarks of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. The Coldwell Banker® System is comprised of company owned offices which are owned by a subsidiary of Realogy Brokerage Group LLC and franchised offices which are independently owned and operated. The Coldwell Banker System fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. 228AHB-DC_GLA_2/22

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Hidden behind tall hedges and lush landscaping, this traditional Santa Barbara estate is located in the desirable Hope Ranch community, offering beautiful mountain and canyon views and open-concept living. Vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, impressive French doors and windows and an abundance of natural light give a sense of comfort and sophistication. Main Residence: 4 Beds, 4 Full Baths, 1½ Bath Approx. 4,890 SF 1.2 Acres 2-Car Garage Pool & Spa Playground

Guest Residence: 2 Beds, 1 Bath Approx. 800 SF

Between 2 (Thousand) Ferns

hen you drive up to David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik’s estate in Montecito, what you first notice is what you don’t see. The place is inconspicuous, almost hidden. There’s no coat of arms or imposing stone lions standing watch over the driveway. At first blush, the place looks like maybe the understated caterer’s entrance to the San Ysidro Ranch, which is not far away. I’d heard of the apocryphal magical gardens developed by TV mega creators Klarik and Crane. A gobsmacked mutual friend said they were hard to describe. “Kind of like Lotusland but without the gnomes. And I don’t think there’s a gift shop but I’m not a hundred percent sure.” When you step out of your car there is a flood for the senses. It sounds like Montecito, only more so. The crunch of the gravel seems to have been fine tuned in postproduction. And the babbling brook seems close to saying things that are intelligible. Much like their show Friends depicted an idealized version of New York, this place seems to present an even more idealized version of an already ideal Montecito. David Crane emerges from the 1928 Reginald Johnson-designed home looking like the pep squad guy sans megaphone or maybe the preppy house manager but he’s actually one of the guys who owns the place.

Friends co-creator David Crane and partner, show creator Jeffrey Klarik, tour the “episodes” of their Montecito Shangri-La SOME WORDS BY LES FIRESTEIN BETTER WORDS BY JEFFREY KLARIK AND DAVID CRANE PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD CLYNES

rane greets me with an unearned hug and I’m already wondering, How could this TV titan be so nice and free from pretension? I’ve met showbiz folk who were far more arrogant about far less, but I decide not to question my good fortune as Crane guides me through the foyer of his cottage that is gingerbread in color and may in fact be gingerbread. As Crane escorts me through the manse and back outside, one feels teleported into van Gogh’s Arles, an impressionist painting come to life. One also notices it’s not a garden but more a series of gardens (with an S) and one begins to understand what led Klarik’s mother to say, “It’s what God would do if He had money.” It’s more like a catalog of gardens, one more magnificent than the next. As I collect flies in my slack jawed mouth, Crane announces that his writing partner and husband, Jeffrey, will be joining us shortly. Crane is an outstanding docent, a skill he honed when he was a tour guide at Universal Studios, pre-Friends. Heck, he developed that skill long before his first successful series Dream On. LF: This place is so cool. It’s so… oddly unadorned. There are… no signs of show business. Maybe a topiary replica of Central Perk? An animatronic Courteney Cox? JK: We were looking more for a refuge than an homage.

JEFFREY KLARIK AND DAVID CRANE WITH THEIR LITTLE FRIENDS

turn to see that Jeffrey Klarik has joined our tour in progress. Klarik does not wear a smoking jacket but when he delivers bons mots it’s hard not to picture him in one. Jeffrey is droll to David’s dry. As they’ve proven through multiple hit series, Klarik and Crane are the perfect comedy cocktail. As we commence our tour around the estate, one is struck by how there’s not a solitary KA-POW! moment as there is with more grandiose estates. The gardens here instead play out like, dare I say it, a sequence of episodes. It’s not an exaggeration to say one could get lost here and, on another occasion when I return with a photographer, we actually do get lost. For a moment, Montecito meets Blair Witch. LF: I have to say, it’s very hard to discern where, and even if, the gardens end here. JK: That’s by design. I have an aversion to endings. It’s always been important to me to not see where things end. Once you’re here, you shouldn’t know where the borders are. LF: How much of this was here when you got here? JK: Well, obviously the old-growth trees, which are historical. But the 2018 mudslide overran essentially everything and that gave us a chance to pretty much start from scratch. LF: It’s like the Garden of Eden 2.0. What was your inspiration for all this? JK: Honestly? The designer showrooms at Bloomingdale’s by the design genius Barbara D’Arcy. Back in the day, Bloomingdale’s in New York did all these themed showrooms up on the sixth floor. And I remember feeling transported as one would walk from one room to another and one “experience” into another. It felt immersive and infinite and mesmerizing. Only you walked the experience instead of scrolling it. It was Instagram before Instagram.

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LF: Interesting. My mom, also a New York artist and decorator, was inspired by the same place. Only in our case she transformed our apartment into what looked like a very labyrinthine Chinese restaurant. JK: Were the spring rolls at least good? Because, you know, that’s the test. LF: The spring rolls were meh, but the sesame chicken was serviceable.

t this point in the tour, a brick path has us on a collision course with the comically large trunk of a comically large Eucalyptus tree. JK: We call that our “van Gogh tree.” LF: Because it has a tendency to inflict self-harm? JK: Because of the quality of the bark. It feels like van Gogh could have painted it. LF: This tree is so large it looks like it’s the secret entrance to one of those underground tunnels at Disney. Is that why I haven’t seen any workers? DC: They’re on break with Mickey and Goofy. LF: Your place truly reminds me a little of Disney. Except you replaced overpriced souvenirs with tastefulness, and obesity with Pilates instructors. JK: Actually, we got a personal tour of the tunnel system at Disney. It really exists. LF: So, it’s not just a suburban myth like Walt Disney’s cryogenically frozen head? DC: Interestingly, in the early days of Friends, Disney came to us with a proposal to do a collaboration and they VIP toured us through the entire park and said, “Shoot whatever you want, you have carte blanche. We just want you to do an episode of Friends that takes place here.” JK: So, we’re there at Disney World for literally days, figuring out the perfect plot. They bent over backward to try and make us happy. At one point I jokingly said, “What is that horrible sound, children laughing?” And they made them move away! DC: We finally come up with this really fun plot where Joey sleeps with the actress portraying Cinderella – JK: But of course, she must return the costume by midnight. DC: And the people at Disney were like, “Cool. Just write it up so we can clear it with legal.” And so a few days later we get a very official letter from Disney legal on a very nice stock of paper that said, “Joey can’t fuck Cinderella. No one is fucking Cinderella.” And that was that.

s we perambulate through Jeffrey Klarik’s carefully curated Arles, it’s as if we have entered a veritable Harrods of flora and exotic vegetation not to mention perfectly patinaed garden architecture and follies. We pass a koi pond

“We always say David sees the glass as half full.” “And Jeffrey thinks the glass is an idiot.”

that’s really more of a koi lake, somehow cascading waterfalls (don’t ask me how), lily ponds, grottos, and even a few meadows seemingly thrown in for good measure. Finally, we approach an already flaming fire pit near a stone barbecue that was part of the original 1920s estate. It seems like the perfect place to sit and rest and probably watch the chickens come out, slather themselves in barbecue sauce, then happily cook themselves. Will the candelabra sing “Be Our Guest”? I’m not sure. It is one of several perfect places on campus to write and create and schmooze and the perfect place to sit and discuss the evolution of Klarik and Crane’s storied careers in television – and how they relate to this place.

LF: So take me on the journey that gets us here, to this place in your lives and this sanctuary. Your first show Dream On was kind of a meta comedy both inspired by TV and making use of clips from TV. Where did that come from, or did you just have these old clips laying around, so it was the TV version of quilting? DC: Universal had the library of footage and was looking for an excuse, or let’s call it a “device,” for repurposing it. JK: Dream On was an early triumph of upcycling. LF: Dream On was one of the first original series on HBO. I remember they’d run it endlessly along with the football comedy 1st & Ten. How was the HBO Christmas party with O.J. Simpson? JK: Well, that was still during O.J.’s Hertz days, a bit before his “hurts” days. LF: I know someone who lives quite close to here who was at a wedding seated between O.J. Simpson and Donald Trump. What do you think of that seating arrangement? DC: Sounds like someone had a beef with the wedding planner.

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LF: So after the meta hit Dream On, then you guys have the mega hit, the monster hit Friends. I’m curious what was the original idea behind Friends? DC: It was about that time in your life when your friends are your family. LF: So, it’s about when your friends crush your spirit and say they wish you were never born?

JK: Not my family. A normal family. DC: More of a hypothetical family. An idealized family. LF: So the show is a juggernaut, tapping into the brain stems of, apparently, all primates. It inspires a haircut, a hit song, and is multigenerational. But amid that huge success you come here. DC: For the occasional weekend. It was like exhaling. Jeffrey also happens to be somewhat prescient. One time when we were staying

Friends

at the San Ysidro Ranch, he said, mind you with certitude, “At some point we’re going to live here.” And indeed, one day not long after that we asked a broker to show us only beachfront property. JK: That broker flagrantly disobeyed our wishes and thank God. DC: He brought us here. We didn’t even go inside and made an offer on the spot. LF: It seems like a snow globe without the hassle of snow. Is that what you love about it?

Friends

JK: I love the isolation but also the idea that within the unseen walls of this sanctuary, somehow possibility still seems infinite. LF: And what do you love most about Montecito? JK: That we only have one bad neighbor and we’re talking to him right now. LF: What’s the most dangerous part of Montecito? JK: Probably getting on the 101 in Summerland. LF: And of course you guys came up here long before the Montecito “boom.” Back when billionaires were comparatively rare. Were you aware our new town slogan is “Montecito – it’s Bitcoin you can live in?” DC: I’m pretty sure I saw that on someone’s license plate holder. LF: Can we talk a little about your reunion show? DC: We can talk a lot about the Friends reunion. LF: I know it was one of the most watched shows in years. A Super Bowl of sorts. DC: It was very gratifying. LF: What was the most gratifying part? DC: The testimonials from people all over the world. About the reach, the impact of the show. LF: The reunion show lost the Emmy to the play Hamilton. What’s up with that? DC: That’s okay. Everything loses to Hamilton eventually. JK: Except for Aaron Burr of course. LF: So after you did Friends, you did another successful show, Episodes. JK: Not exactly. If Friends was a show where NBC got everything right, we followed Friends with a show called The Class where CBS got everything wrong. Even though we had a remarkable cast, people like Lizzy Caplan and Jon Bernthal and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. DC: The good thing was those horrendous network experiences became the grist for our next show, Episodes, about two TV writers. LF: Another case of you guys upcycling your scraps. It must have been cathartic to turn all that into another successful show, with your network adversaries all becoming characters.

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

JK: People wondered if we were concerned about burning bridges by portraying the network as we did. I said I only need bridges if I intend to go back over them. Which I didn’t. We’re all about moving forward. LF: Okay so after The Class, then you did Episodes starting in 2010/2011. And obviously you had learned a very valuable lesson. DC: Yes. Never do a series without Matt LeBlanc. LF: That must have been gratifying, putting together a critical hit after a popular hit. Not that Friends wasn’t festooned with accolades. JK: Look at you using “festooned.” LF: You spent a lot of time over in England because Episodes was shot there. Did the time you spent over there influence your gardens? JK: I’m sure there’s a lot I picked up by osmosis. LF: Were you influenced by the many famous gardens of Capability Brown? JK: First “festooned,” now Capability Brown. LF: That’s that gentleman who’s supposed to be England’s greatest landscape architect. JK: There are many wonderful gardens in England. But they tend to be wilder and more chaotic, whereas I prefer gardens a bit more, for lack of a better term… OCD. DC: They also have something over there we don’t have. Called “moisture.” Which helps. LF: What do you think of the name “Capability Brown”? JK: I think it’s a tough name to saddle a kid with in terms of expectations. LF: That’s probably why my folks named me “Les.” Do you hang out up here with the Montecito TV mafia? DC: There’s a Montecito TV mafia? No one tells us anything.

JK: We mostly hang out right here. We’re happy when it’s just the two of us. DC: We don’t really have famous friends. LF: Do you think you’ve watched more episodes of Suits than Meghan has seen of Episodes? DC: I don’t know, but I’ll definitely ask her when I run into her at Vons. LF: Speaking of new Montecitans, you have a new neighbor who is quite famous for her candle. JK: So that’s the fragrance I couldn’t identify? LF: Do you ever worry if she burns too many candles at once, the scent could overwhelm the natural fragrance here you’ve worked so hard to curate? JK: You might be more expert in that matter than we are. LF: If you guys had a candle, what would it smell like?

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

his is where the conversation takes a left turn. I’ve been peppering Crane and Klarik with some good questions and many inappropriate ones when Jeffrey surprises us all by taking one of my odd questions seriously. JK: My candle would smell like… hope. David Crane looks at his partner, stunned. JK: No, seriously. What’s the first thing that came to mind? And I thought “hope.”

rane, elated, does his version of a touchdown dance. DC: That is the most unlikely answer from you. That’s... fantastic! It’s… of the two of us, he’s the darker, more cynical one. That makes me SO happy! I LOVE that! No one will believe you said that who knows you. JK: We have this joke that David sees the glass as half full – DC: And Jeffrey thinks the glass is an idiot. God, I love that he said that. That’s amazing. Hope.

“ The people at Disney were like, ‘Cool. Just write it up so we can clear it with legal.’ And so a few days later we get a very official letter from Disney legal on a very nice stock of paper that said, ‘Joey can’t f *ck Cinderella. No one is f *cking Cinderella.’ And that was that.” – David Crane

SUSTAINING A LEGACY ON THE ANCIENT SPANISH RIVIERA ISLAND OF IBIZA, ARCHITECT ROLF BLAKSTAD AND HIS FAMILY’S FIRM HAVE MASTERED THE POWER OF COASTAL VERNACULAR DESIGN

ith its whitewashed structures that unify earth, sea, and sky – and a casually decadent lifestyle not unlike that found on our American Riviera – Ibiza epitomizes the ideal of organic leisure. The Mediterranean destination has functioned as a rich crossroads of cultures from Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East for millennia, and Blakstad Design Consultants has tapped into this well of inspiration and time-tested knowledge, shaping the future of coastal architecture and design one one-of-a-kind residence at a time. Founded in Ibiza in 1967 by Rolph Blakstad, Blakstad Design Consultants is now headed by his son, Rolf (same name, differ-

A poolside view of Can Xamo. In Catalan, “Can” is the equivalent of Casa, Chez, or Villa.

ent spelling), whose principles and modus operandi are firmly rooted in the concept of genius loci (the ancient Roman concept of supreme deference to the local atmosphere) particularly as that pertains to the Spanish island, where Blakstad builds approximately 15 homes per year. Rolf ’s latest output is collected in a new book, Ibiza House Design, which features more than 30 projects with examples of rigorously rustic and sophisticated designs that merge indoor and outdoor living. Many engage in intense visual dialogues with their Balearic Sea settings; all maximize the potential of awe-inspiring locations with deep reverence for place and tradition. IBIZA

A snapshot of Rolf Blakstad’s late father, Rolph

STORY BY JESSICA RITZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONRAD WHITE STYLING BY LOLI SAN VARGAS SPANISH RIVIERA

Can Salvador, an example of how Blakstad Design Consultants seamlessly integrate ancient forms with modern conveniences and understated luxury

AREFULLY CONSIDERING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR C SPACES – AND “THE WAY THEY FLOW AND MERGE” IN CONCERT WITH LANDSCAPE DESIGN (A NOTION THAT UNDERSCORES SANTA BARBARA’S ICONIC DESIGN AS WELL) – ARE KEY TO THIS HOLISTIC EXPERIENCE OF ONE’S ENVIRONMENT.

hen it comes to addressing urgent issues of the current day, Rolf Blakstad takes the long view regarding the synchronization of architecture, technology, and sustainability. “We have a misled concept of our forebears,” he explains. “If you think about how they lived, the Romans had underfloor heating; they had great luxury.” A conversation with Blakstad quickly reveals his wide-ranging and nuanced grasp of the island’s past, including the enduring imprint of the Phoenician period that dates from circa 650 BCE and still can be seen in extant architectural features

like flat roofs and cubic massings. His company’s designs showcase humble materials such as limestone, stucco, and Ibiza’s local Savin juniper wood while elevating the contemporary language of island luxury. Ancient forms including concisely arranged geometric archways and colonnades evoke timeless resonance. Carefully considering the relationship between interior and exterior spaces – and “the way they flow and merge” in concert with landscape design (a notion that underscores Santa Barbara’s iconic design as well) – are key to this holistic experience of one’s environment.

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BLAKSTAD DESIGN CONSULTANTS SHOWCASES HUMBLE MATERIALS SUCH AS LIMESTONE, STUCCO, AND IBIZA’S LOCAL SAVIN JUNIPER WOOD WHILE ELEVATING THE CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE OF ISLAND LUXURY.

lakstad easily draws parallels between premodern building techniques around the world, whether it’s in his Mediterranean milieu where “the architecture has been developed for thousands of years,” or an adobe in the Southwestern United States. (His current international project list includes a home in Scottsdale, Arizona.) “They are independent, but similar,” he observes. Tactile elements harmonize with the specificity of the surroundings. Furnishings and decorative surfaces might change, but the volumes and spatial relationships remain true to their respective origins. Ancient sustainable-by-default concepts such as efficient air circulation and rainwater-capturing systems are still used, but Blakstad still relies on modern technology to provide the creature comforts his clients expect of bespoke villas. “It is our lifestyles that have changed from what these buildings were originally designed for,” he says. “How do we adapt the house to the lifestyle rather than our lifestyle to the house? That of course is the challenge – finding the balance.” Solar panels might power a modern Roman-inspired bathroom, for instance. His firm’s designs address a significant piece of the puzzle, “because they’re adapted to the climates we work in.” He applies this ethos around the world in locations such as Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, and he recently completed renderings for a home right here in Montecito.

Can Trull

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

The work of Blakstad Design Consultants taps into ancient forms and Ibiza’s unique heritage and history as a cultural crossroads

“ IT IS OUR LIFESTYLES THAT HAVE CHANGED FROM WHAT THESE BUILDINGS WERE ORIGINALLY DESIGNED FOR. HOW DO WE ADAPT THE HOUSE TO THE LIFESTYLE RATHER THAN OUR LIFESTYLE TO THE HOUSE? THAT OF COURSE IS THE CHALLENGE – FINDING THE BALANCE.”

lakstad’s own life story and work are part of a multigenerational legacy. Ever since his father founded the company, “we basically have been drawing on traditional architecture,” he says. “We’ve evolved, but we’ve kept the same philosophy throughout.” Blakstad’s grandfather Peter emigrated in 1902 from Norway to Alaska and then Canada, where he established a career in architecture and building. (He visited Santa Barbara during the 1920s, too.) Vancouver-reared Rolph and his wife, Mary, headed off in search of different territory and settled in Ibiza in 1956. The built environment and terrain further ignited his son’s verve for the field into which he was born. “When I was a teenager, I got

dragged off to the workshop and I’ve stayed there ever since,” jokes Blakstad, who studied architecture in Madrid and whose brother, Nial, is also in the building industry. “My father was very passionate about what he did, and he passed that on.” Blakstad applies the wide lens of history to his industry, mentioning that “after the Dark Ages, so much civilization was lost” – a fate that intentional design can help avoid. Moving forward, Blakstad sees more clients requesting building practices and methods for powering their homes that carry lighter footprints. “It’s usually more costly to build, but the quality of life is so much better. People and markets are going to demand it.”

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Chic Modern Farmhouse | 3570Woodstock.com | Price Upon Request Dramatic mountain views are the backdrop to this chic designed modern farmhouse. Situated on 20+/- acres, the sanctuary offers a gathering-place for family and friends. Enjoy multiple guest units, pool, sauna and equestrian facilities. Nature lovers relax beside a small pond complete with ducks or amble along riding and walking trails through ancient oaks.

ARTIST

STORY BY JEFF WING

TONI SCOTT THE FINE ART OF TURNING ON THE LIGHTS

TONI SCOTT, WHO RECEIVED HER MFA FROM UC SANTA BARBARA IN 2018 AND WAS ARTIST IN RESIDENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY’S COLLEGE OF CREATIVE STUDIES UNTIL 2019, AT HER STUDIO IN GOLETA (PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES)

"[MY UNCLE'S RESEARCH OF OUR FAMILY] CHANGED THE COURSE OF MY ART. SEEING THE PHOTOS OF FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WERE SLAVES, SLAVEHOLDERS, AND MY INDIGENOUS ANCESTORS – THIS GALVANIZED A DESIRE TO EXPLORE AMERICAN HISTORY, TO GIVE VOICE TO THE VOICELESS, TO TAKE PRIDE IN MY FAMILY’S RESILIENCE.”

THE BUS TO EQUALITY WITH ROSA PARKS TIME TRAVELER SERIES | COLLAGE ON CANVAS | 24”H X 28”W THIS SERIES FOLLOWS A YOUNG AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN AS SHE TRAVELS THROUGH HISTORY OF THE BLACK AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. CRISPUS ATTUCKS, STRANGE FRUIT, JIM CROW, TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, THE BUS TO EQUALITY WITH ROSA PARKS.

oni Scott is the perfect storm. A celebrated multimedia artist with a seemingly boundless expressive range, Scott is also the literal personification of a blood legacy that begs a messenger – a storyteller with the means to illuminate a narrative whose density has made it all but impenetrable. The turbulent and interrelated social histories that comprise our nation find their confluence in the singular Toni Scott. “I have a multi-ethnic ancestry of African, European, and Native American,” she says. “I’m a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and a descendant of emancipated African Americans – slaves on three plantations in the South. My European ancestors arrived before the Mayflower, and later joined the pilgrimage of deliberate New World colonists.”

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

BLACK MONA LISA HERITAGE SERIES OIL ON CANVAS | 30”H X 15”W THE HERITAGE SERIES IS A PAINTING AND SCULPTURE SERIES THAT CELEBRATES THE AFRICAN DIASPORA AND SEEKS TO FILL THE GAP OF UNDERREPRESENTED WOMEN AND PEOPLE OF COLOR IN MUSEUMS

er renowned “Bloodlines” exhibition – a variously harrowing and exalting immersion in the historical slave trade through sculpture, photography, personal narratives, and Scott’s own genealogy – was the first installation specifically designed for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, where the exhibition had its inaugural public unveiling in 2012. “Bloodlines included life-size body casts of the descendants of slaves, a large ship that carried enslaved Africans, a 12-foot slave cabin, a lifesized cotton picker in a cotton field, a six-foot suspended embarkation canoe, a seven-foot sculpture of Eve representing the first enslaved woman in America to be sold on an auction block, and an extensive family tree of my ancestors.”

THE FORGOTTEN TRANSPARENCY, ACETATE, BAMBOO, SISAL, PLASTIC | 24’L X 10’H X 8’D THE FORGOTTEN FEATURING 600 FACES OF SLAVES, REMEMBERING THOSE WHOSE LIVES WERE TAKEN

FORMER GREENHOUSE REIMAGINED AS A SPARK-THROWING ART ENGINE (PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES)

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

NUBIAN QUEEN CARRARA MARBLE ON BLACK BELGIUM MARBLE | 25” H X 14”W X 10”D BLACK WOMAN CARVED IN CLASSICAL WHITE MARBLE FILLING A VOID OF BLACK PEOPLE MISSING IN CLASSICAL SCULPTURE

THE KINGDOM HATSHEPSUT CHLORITE | 14”H X 10”W X 6”D THE FIRST WOMAN PHARAOH

TONI SCOTT IN PIETRASANTA, CARVING BLACK BELGIUM MARBLE “I LISTEN FOR THE FIGURE IN THE STONE. THE STONE SPEAKS TO ME, I CARVE AND LIBERATE THE FIGURE.”

I CAN’T BREATHE (FOREGROUND); INDIGO PAINTINGS (BACKGROUND) CEMENT, WOOD, LINEN | 16”H X 12”W X 7.4”D SCULPTURE WAS FIRST CREATED IN PLASTER IN 2009 IN RESPONSE TO THE MURDER OF OSCAR GRANT. I RECAST THE SCULPTURE IN 2020 IN RESPONSE TO GEORGE FLOYD.

he arguable anchor of “Bloodlines” is a suspended 24-foot slave ship replica whose hull is constituted of some 500 actual images of slaves – blue-tinted, translucent, and dazzlingly lit from within; the electric beauty of the piece at odds with the unmediated horror of what it represents. “Bloodlines” has traveled the United States, and in 2015 and ’16 had a much talked-about sojourn at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University in Beijing, resulting in Scott’s subsequent invite to be the first international artist to mount a solo exhibition at the Changzhou Museum in Jiangsu Province of China. It was in Peking that Scott’s expressionist slave ship, The Forgotten, was added to and debuted in the exhibit “DNA: Bloodlines and the Family of Mankind,” before travelling on to Changzhou.

Celebrating Montecito’s Architectural Icon,

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hese darkling human narratives – recapitulated as immersive, stirring works of artistic empathy – clearly transcend culture. “Art has always been a part of my life,” Scott says simply. “My great-grandmother created mosaics of our Muscogee Creek tribal designs, my grandmother was a ceramist, painter…and a professional whistler! My aunt was an opera singer, another aunt was a painter. My mom, Dolores, was a writer and singer.” Scott’s sister Sherry, a preternaturally gifted painter since the tender age of 5, ultimately covered the walls of the household with her murals. Scott’s brother was an audio experimenter and drummer. Scott’s father was the prototypical creator/innovator in the garage, toiling in a shower of sparks on projects young Toni only vaguely apprehended. But when you see a photo of our artist – one where she wears what looks like a rubberized butcher’s apron as she demurely hoists an enormous chisel or chainsaw? That’s all dad. “I spent a lot of time with Dad,” Scott says with a slight grin. “I guess you could call me a Daddy’s girl – gathering tools when he needed them, helping out here and there. Spending time with Dad in his garage helped shape me into a fearless sculptor.” So, yeah. This is Scott’s family. It may be fair to say young Toni’s chances of maturing into a certified public accountant were slim at best.

RAINMAKING RITUAL ACRYLIC ON CANVAS | 6’H X 5’W RAINMAKING CEREMONIES ARE AN IMPORTANT CULTURAL TRADITION FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD. THIS TRADITION IS STEEPED IN BRINGING LIFE-GIVING WATER TO THE EARTH.

RAIN AND FIRE ACRYLIC ON CANVAS | 48”H X 36”W “ELEMENTS INTEGRAL TO CEREMONIES OF MY AFRICAN AND INDIGENOUS ANCESTRY. RAIN DANCE AND FIRE DANCE.”

WE’RE ALL THE SAME UNDER THE SKIN SUMI INK ON CANVAS 52”H X 96”W CELEBRATION TO SIMILARITIES VERSUS DISSIMILARITIES

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

SCOTT’S HOME LIFE FORGED – FROM A LOVING ABUNDANCE OF WILDLY VARIED RAW MATERIALS – A WHOLE NEW ALLOY.

MANGBETU WOMAN FIBERGLASS (OPTION FOR BRONZE) | 30”H X 23” W X 12” D “THIS IS AN HOMAGE TO THE AFRICAN DIASPORA, AND IS PART OF MY HERITAGE SERIES, LOOKING BACK AND REACHING FORWARD, IMAGES OF MY ANCESTORS. THIS IS INSPIRED BY THE MANGBETU (ALSO SPELLED MONBUTTU) PEOPLES OF CENTRAL AFRICA LIVING TO THE SOUTH OF THE ZANDE IN NORTHEASTERN CONGO (KINSHASA). THE MANGBETU ARE KNOWN FOR THEIR HIGHLY DEVELOPED ART AND MUSIC. ONE INSTRUMENT ASSOCIATED WITH AND NAMED AFTER THEM IS THE MANGBETU HARP OR GUITAR.”

s Scott grew, so did the range of her influencers. “Artists like Joan Carl inspired me. She introduced me to stone carving, wax sculpting, and her artistic purity helped me to focus and prioritize. Artists like John Ottobridge, Charles Dickson, Artis Lane, and John Paul Thornton – all greatly successful artistic purists – gave me manna for my art soul; gifts to survive and flourish.” A selftaught artist, Scott’s brief forays into formal art education were not initially nourishing experiences. BLACK EVE (FOREGROUND); WATER LIBATION (BACKGROUND) RESIN, BLACK ACRYLIC PATINA | 7’H X 36”W X 30”D BLACK EVE EMBRACES HER AFRICAN HERITAGE, STANDS TALL, TENACIOUS, AND RESILIENT

TONI SCOTT — RAISED IN A CROWDED CHRYSALIS — HAD LITTLE CHOICE BUT TO EMERGE A MULTIMEDIA MESSENGER WITH A DAZZLING VOCABULARY (PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES)

“W

hen I was in art school, I felt very discouraged and very alone,” says Scott. “So I left Otis [College of Art and Design]. USC international relations became my new teacher.” Scott found in her successful pivot a species of what fulfilled her in art: absorption in full-spectrum humanity. “International relations satisfied my interests: history, culture, global politics, and – most inspirationally – diplomacy.” Scott pauses. “The jump from art school to the IR program was a challenge. I still painted at night whenever possible.” In 2004, Scott’s uncle – Richard Procello – surprised the family with a self-researched, self-published tome titled Discovering Our Past: The May Family History 1705-2004. As epiphanies go, this one was path-forking. “His research in the book changed the course of my art. Seeing the photos of family members who were slaves, slaveholders, and my indigenous ancestors – this galvanized a desire to explore American history, to give voice to the voiceless, to take pride in my family’s resilience.”

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NUBIA CLAY WITH OPTION FOR BRONZE | 30”H X 25”W X12” “THIS REPRESENTS A QUEEN FROM THE KINGDOM OF NUBIA (AN ANCIENT REGION IN NORTHEASTERN AFRICA, EXTENDING APPROXIMATELY FROM THE NILE RIVER VALLEY EASTWARD TO THE SHORES OF THE RED SEA, SOUTHWARD TO ABOUT KHARTOUM, IN WHAT IS NOW SUDAN), AND WESTWARD TO THE LIBYAN DESERT. THE SCULPTURE IS PART OF MY HERITAGE SERIES THAT CELEBRATES AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN. IT IS INSPIRED TO PROVIDE POSITIVE IMAGES OF BLACK PEOPLE THAT ARE ABSENT IN MAJOR ART COLLECTIONS.”

er uncle Richard’s second volume, Grandmother Dora (Knoll) May, brought Scott’s indigenous heritage into focus – to put it mildly – and an artist was effectively reborn. “Making that historic connection to my ancestors was a thunderbolt of pride,” Scott says. When she avidly renewed her commitment to the art mission, her North Star shone with an unmistakable brilliance. Scott received her MFA from UC Santa Barbara in 2018 and was Artist in Residence at the university’s College of Creative Studies until 2019. Scott’s almost uncanny mastery – of whatever medium she lays hands on – has served her well. Her explorations necessitate a range of materials equal to the gradations of the filigreed human story she continues to tell. Art speaks where words fail, and by this measure, Scott’s work is an uninterrupted flow of bracing, vitalizing eloquence that stuns and edifies. America’s turbulent foundation story inheres in Toni Scott’s actual blood, but even that extraordinary heritage may have remained an unsung fact of cellular heraldry – had Scott not been raised in the right-brain rhapsody of a family restlessly alive with creativity. Crucible is a loaded word, but Scott’s home life forged – from a loving abundance of wildly varied raw materials – a whole new alloy. Her name is Toni Scott. “I’ve sharpened my tools, so to speak,” she says declaratively, “and continue to deepen my journey.”

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

HOMELY MAN BUILT HANDSOME HOUSES

SWALLOWED A WHOLE TOWN IN UTAH!

GOOD ENOUGH FOR HEARST BUT NOT LARRY E!

THE PEACOCK

THE ORACLE OF MORE-ACLE!

JULIA MORGAN

GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH

LARRY ELLISON

COLONEL DANIEL JACKLING

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SOLD PIXAR TO STEVE!

ONE DATE WITH STEVE AND DIANE WAS CURED!

BEN AFFLECK

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DIANE KEATON

GEORGE LUCAS

THE GIFT THAT KEPT ON GIVING

HER DATE WITH STEVE WENT BETTER THAN DIANE’S!

BEFORE J.LO THERE WAS LA.JO

Photo credits: Larry Ellison (photo by Hartmann Studios), Peacock image (photo by Jatin Sindhu), Chelsea Clinton (photo by Ali Shaker/VOA), George Lucas (photo by Nicolas Genin), Ben Affleck (photo by Gene Bromberg)

BILL

Why G.W. Smith Matters CHELSEA

THE CLINTONS: HILLARY

STEVE JOBS’s lifelong war to tear down his GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH manse raises questions about “important” houses: To whom do they belong? Photography by MARC APPLETON talks to THE RIV ’s LES FIRESTEIN. JONATHAN HAEBER

DIOGENES OF SINOPE

STEVE JOBS

FREQUENTLY STAYED AT JACKLING!

STEVE’S “OTHER” ORACLE!

ver wonder why so much Western architecture is Spanish? In 1914, the Panama Canal opened, and San Diego developed Balboa Park in the Spanish Revival style to beautify itself as the “first port” of entry to the United States. How a port looked was important for commerce because San Diego wanted to give passengers a reason to get off the boat. In 1925, the Santa Barbara earthquake hit. Up until that point, Santa Barbara looked like a typical Victorian Gold Rush town, but a couple of local activists prevailed upon the town to implement an overarching plan for Santa Barbara’s rebuild in the Andalusian style. Whereas San Diego’s Balboa Park had been a commercial venture, the Santa Barbara plan extended an aesthetic into residential architecture, of which the Spanish-style homes by G.W. Smith were the most coveted and emulated. With one notable exception. Tech titan Steve Jobs owned a very famous G.W. Smith mansion near his Apple headquarters in Woodside, California. And he spent much of his life and his dying days trying to tear it down. The inescapable question is: why? LES FIRESTEIN: This is a pretty crazy real estate story. And not just because it involves you and me. MARC APPLETON: Yeah, Steve Jobs had a vendetta against a house. Which probably sounds more Stephen King than Steve Jobs. But of course, it’s a true story.

NEVER MET A RULE HE DIDN’T BREAK!

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LF: It’s so weird. It’d be one thing if Jobs had inherited the house. Or if, like, the place was “cursed” or something. But none of those things happened. Jobs bought the house of his own free will then just turned against it at some point. MA: Yes, Jobs spent a lot of energy battling it. While simultaneously fighting terminal cancer. LF: I’m not sure what it says about a man who literally hates his own home. MA: I think it’s an important story because ultimately, it’s about who gets to decide our future landscape. And everything about the story is big. The stakes, egos, players involved, etc. LF: It’s an age-old tale. Of powerful men and their erections. MA: I was going to say it’s like a movie. Complete with Diane Keaton. Oh, and if I’m not mistaken, you’re involved as well? LF: I was a bit player. But let’s start at the beginning. Marc, please give us some context. MA: What I hadn’t seen until Jobs is that most power-obsessed clients are fixated on building a monument, a Mt. Rushmore to themselves. Jobs, on the other hand, was obsessed with flexing his power in a way that was monumentally destructive rather than constructive. LF: And as a centimillionaire in his 20s, Jobs had the yank and the bank to get it done.

That’s not a pattern on the ceiling. It’s mold.

MA: Back when centimillionaire was still a rare occurrence. LF: So Jobs, who had 50 copies of the same shirt and dressed exactly the same every day of his life, buys the Jackling mansion in Woodside in 1984. Seems like an odd choice for a notorious streamliner and minimalist. MA: Jobs was obsessive about design. But he designed for the masses, not the classes. Romance and ornament were definitely not his things. LF: So did he always plan on replacing Jackling? MA: I think Jobs knew of the pedigree of the property but always thought he could replace it. LF: The Jackling house was designed by George Washington Smith, considered the dean of American Spanish Colonial style. And you won’t say this, but YOU are considered the current dean of Spanish Colonial style. MA: Maybe acting dean. Until someone better is found to replace me. And we should probably stop using the word “colonial.” LF: Noted. We’ll add “colonial” to the scrap heap with “master bedroom.” So please tell The Riv why G.W. Smith was important. MA: Santa Barbara used to be what I’d call “ramshackle Victorian” until the Great Quake of 1925. My grandmother Mrs. Peter Cooper Bryce gave Smith one of his first important commissions, an estate in Hope Ranch called Florestal. Smith’s architecture struck

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Some people like floral designs on their walls. Steve Jobs opted for actual vegetation.

a perfect balance between romance and restraint and was supremely influential in developing what came to be known as Santa Barbara style. Which in turn became, basically, California style. Which of course greatly influenced the entire Western United States. LF: So in 1984, seven years after founding Apple, Jobs bought the Jackling house, which he lived in but famously didn’t furnish. MA: My understanding is Jobs fancied himself a stoic like the Greek philosopher Diogenes who lived in a giant jar to avoid outside distraction. The same goes for his “capsule wardrobe.” By owning nothing, Jobs could stay focused on “putting his dent in the universe,” to quote him. LF: And my understanding is Jobs kept just a handful of possessions at Jackling. A meditation mat with the Apple logo on it, a couple of Eames chairs, and a really nice stereo. MA: Yes, that, and a $2 million Tiffany lamp. LF: I have a theory, which is based on my lofty credentials as the son of a psychiatrist. My theory is Jobs, having no possessions, harkens back to his first botched adoption.

MA: I know there was an initial adoption that didn’t “take.” LF: Yeah, and there was a second adoption that almost didn’t take. I think Jobs was always ready to leave, waiting to be returned. He had difficulties forming attachments. His eventual parents even said they weren’t sure they’d keep him during those first two difficult years. MA: I have nowhere near your qualifications as the son of a psychiatrist – that’s heady stuff. But I do know pretty much as soon as Jobs took possession of Jackling, he got axed by Apple. LF: Yeah, he had that little Apple meditation mat pulled out from under him. Do you think the timing of Jobs’s firing is critical in explaining his attitude toward Jackling? MA: Well, it’s ground zero of his exile. In his mind, he went from King of the Hill to Fool on the Hill in just eight years. Those are some head-snapping G forces. And certainly, it must have sucked for Jobs, banging around in someone else’s Andalusian fantasy – and someone else’s design. LF: Like the movie Big but done as a tragedy instead of a comedy.

Florestal

arc Appleton is an architect and the reigning dean of Santa Barbara Spanish Revival style. Appleton was raised in a famous G.W. Smith estate, Florestal, commissioned by Appleton’s grandmother, Angelica Brown Bryce. Living in Florestal must have rubbed off because Appleton has been one of Architectural Digest’s Top 100 architects since the list was created 30 years ago. Appleton has written many books and given many lectures on George Washington Smith. Angelica Brown Bryce, circa 1925

Another George Washington smith estate, the Moffitt House

Florestal located in today’s Hope Ranch, circa 1930

The entrance to the estate, circa 1970

MARC APPLETON

FAMED SANTA BARBARA ARCHITECT

The entry courtyard, circa 1970

Photos courtesy Marc Appleton

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

MA: So one understands Jobs’s desire to have a different narrative there. I just don’t agree with how he went about it. LF: I heard that after getting fired from Apple, Jobs got really unglued at Jackling. His friends were concerned he might off himself. MA: This is around 1985, when Jobs started focusing his wrath on the battle over the house. It’s not a rare thing, the deposed CEO using his forced sabbatical to build something. I’ve built a bunch of those. The big question is: Was that Jobs’s inalienable right? Or does the Jackling house really belong to Smith’s legacy? Or Woodside’s? Or California’s? And who decides? LF: I’m pretty sure the architecture police. MA: Then a very interesting thing happened. Jobs met his neighbor Larry Ellison – another tech megabillionaire – in the famous “peacock incident.” LF: Peacock incident? Is the Tiger King somehow involved with this bromance? MA: Apparently Jobs’s girlfriend gifted him a peacock, which was very loud, and Ellison came over to complain. They wind up bonding over their mutual hate of the peacock, bond over both being adopted, and Ellison becomes kind of a mentor or “oracle” to Jobs – pun intended. LF: Pun accepted.

MA: Together in Woodside, the two tech billionaires with too much time on their hands start plotting Jobs’s return to Apple, Ellison himself in need of a second act to his company, Oracle – even offering to buy Apple Computer for Jobs. LF: That’s a good neighbor! Our neighbors don’t even buy our Girl Scout cookies. MA: Jobs sees Ellison’s master-of-theuniverse Zen-themed wellness center home, which likely inspires what Jobs would like to see replace Jackling. LF: Around this same time (the late 1980s), Jobs also starts getting his first post-Apple traction, there’s positive publicity for his new computer company NeXT, and Jobs buys Pixar from George Lucas, which is how Jobs really made his fortune, moreso even than from Apple. MA: In 1989, Jobs meets his future bride Laurene at a Stanford lecture, and from what I can tell, that turns up the heat on Jobs wanting Jackling razed. We call it “New spouse, new house.” LF: I know in 2000 Jobs stopped living at the house, and let his friends crash there. And by friends, I mean the Clintons and their Secret Service. MA: And eventually Jobs put in for a demo permit on Jackling in 2001. And of course, because Jobs had put in for demolition, that triggered all sorts of environmental impact studies and historical review – years’ worth. Which brings out the preservationists with their pitchforks and lawyers. LF: Did Jobs know his property was historic and that this sort of review would be automatically triggered? MA: It’s unlikely as a 20-something master of the universe that he ever considered Jackling might not be entirely “his” to do with as he pleases. He may not have thought that about anything. My understanding is Jobs may have literally thought he was able to “bend reality.” Hence the famous quote attributed to him, “I’m just trying to make my dent in the universe.”

LF: Interestingly, you have a resurgent Steve Jobs at this point. Everything in his life was working. He even had an apparent victory over cancer. MA: By 2004, Jobs had triumphantly returned to Apple like MacArthur returning from the Pacific, and the Jackling house and its supporters are the only pebble in his shoe. LF: So what does Jobs do? MA: You’d think he’d just sell. There were multiple offers to buy the house. There were also multiple offers to move the house. I remember hearing about you – long before I knew you. LF: There was a big article in The New York Times in the early 2000s on Jobs’s desire to tear down Jackling. When I read it, I reached out to Jobs’s lawyer because I had a vacant lot and it seemed like a better house than any plans I had. But Team Jobs never really “engaged.” MA: They never engaged with anyone. Jobs wanted the house erased. And to ensure that outcome he intentionally “opened” the house to the elements, which is an old developer trick. Basically, they open the house to nature to make sure the structure decays. Then they tell the authorities the place is a health and fire hazard that needs to be torn down. LF: Let’s just say some of the tech guys seem to be more futurists than history buffs. MA: So there was this very protracted lawsuit where preservationists sue the City of Woodside for ever issuing Jobs a demo permit in the first place. And Jobs’s right to tear down his mansion hangs in the balance. LF: Can you take us through the lawsuit? Quickly and entertainingly because…it’s a lawsuit. MA: In a nutshell, from 2004 until around 2010 the preservationists had some early victories, but it didn’t matter because Jobs’s deep pockets allowed him to appeal ad infinitum. LF: And some notable Santa Barbara locals got involved?

MA: I provided some historical context about Smith at the time. And Santa Barbara’s Wendy McCaw, who owns a few Smiths scattered around, also gave

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

testimony in support of Jackling. LF: Of course, lawsuits always favor the deepest pockets and he or she with the most influence.

ED MA: Yeah, and Jobs had influence coming out the wazoo. As I mentioned, the Clintons would stay at Jackling when they visited Chelsea at Stanford. Then Jobs would send Bill recommendations if not outright requests for cabinet posts. LF: So you’re saying the only real question wasn’t if Jobs would win but when? MA: Jobs had sworn to tear down Jackling if it was the last thing he did. And it nearly was. LF: In 2010, more than a decade after he first applied for a demo permit, a Woodside judge cleared Jobs for a new demo permit with the stipulation he remove and try to find homes for certain architectural elements. I believe Diane Keaton was among those contacted. MA: Diane is a big fan of Spanish Revival and, in a minor plot twist, had briefly dated Jobs. I, in fact, got to use some of those treasured, scavenged Jackling details in some other projects. We even used some in the Moffitt House, another Smith manse, that my firm was renovating next door. I believe a lot of Jackling’s pipe organ got salvaged. Those used to be a thing.

LF: Giving new definition to the term “organ donor.” MA: The actual day of the demolition was Valentine’s Day 2011. Jobs was sick, so he had his minions record the erasure of Jackling from every angle – including from the sky. It’s also ironic that Jackling, who was a copper mining baron, basically had his home detonated. LF: It’s such a weird story. Jobs seems to have had really bad luck right after he bought the Jackling house. And died so soon after he destroyed it. It’s almost like Jackling was his jinx. MA: It’s a restoration tragedy. Not just for the house but for this guy, Jobs, who achieved so much but also seemed so tormented and conflicted. He winds up owning Jackling for almost 40 years – that’s triple the time most Americans own a house. But, in the end, even with all his success, Jobs never got to enjoy that feeling we all crave. Of feeling safe. Of feeling home. LF: So with the benefit of hindsight, why was Jobs so obsessed with erasing Jackling? MA: I think there’s a good clue in the commencement speech Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. He said “Death is life’s greatest

invention” – that certain things need to die in order for other things to begin. And he truly believed that. LF: In the context of today’s toppling of various monuments, it’s fair to say we live in a very “loaded” time in terms of what society chooses to preserve and what it chooses to destroy. Looking back, what do you think is the meaning or legacy of the Jackling incident? MA: To me, the big issue unearthed by this story is who gets to decide when it comes to the preservation of residences? I mean Gettysburg is Gettysburg, no one’s going to say

Jobs loved design but had a rather different aesthetic than Smith

there shouldn’t be a monument to that battle. Or at Wounded Knee or wherever. But when it comes to these personal, private, individual residences, it’s rare for preservationists to prevail against a well-funded, determined, persuasive, perseverant opponent. LF: Yes, but here’s where I differ from the historic narrative. The prevailing narrative was that Jobs destroyed the house because he was an enemy of design. But in fact, Jobs was deeply passionate about design. I think he may have even been our greatest industrial designer since Raymond Loewy. He was just an enemy of this particular house. MA: He may not have even been an enemy of this particular house. He was an enemy of being told “no.” –

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STORY BY CATHERINE MCKINLEY

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uring the Roman Empire, the use of indigo attire was forbidden for anyone but nobility, as decreed by Caesar, Augustus, and Nero. Throughout history and on every continent, indigo is a color that has tantalized humankind like no other. Blue is one of nature’s rarest colors, and indigo – a dye obtained from the tiny leaves of small parasitic shrubs that are part of the Indigofera genus – creates the bluest of all blues. For almost five millennia, in every culture and every major religion, indigo has been one of the world’s most valued pigments. No color has been prized so highly or for so long or been at the center of such turbulent human encounters. No fewer than 10 major English language books have been written about the color in the last decade, one of them by me. So why the global fascination with indigo? In the ancient trans-Saharan trade, whose peak extended from the eighth until the late-16th century, camel caravans carried indigo – along with African captives, gold, salt, kola, and other sumptuary items like ivory and ostrich feathers – to Mediterranean hubs where African, Arab, Asian, and European markets converged. Throughout the Middle Ages, Italians expanded this commerce across northern Europe, where it was in great demand for textile manufacturing because of its superiority to European woad in colorfastness and fiber compatibility. For art and decorative architecture, indigo was a rare, refulgent, and costly material used to express, as the contemporary Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi says, the “supraterrestrial…the path to the infinite.” This idea was echoed in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish cultures, where indigo was used to symbolize the ancient caliphate, the royal court, the church and mosque, the canopy of heaven, a holy person’s robes. Interior designer and creator of sumptuous wallpapers and fabrics Katie Leede has a theory as to why the popularity of indigo endures to this day. “I think the scarcity of naturally occurring indigo plays a huge role,” she says. “It’s so rare to see real indigo, but when you do it takes your breath away. You see genuine indigo in certain butterflies and beetles and snails. Certain iridescent minerals. And of course the Texas indigo snake, where I’m from. For me, it’s this rarity that makes indigo evoke the transcendent and the exotic.”

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“I guess that’s why they call it the blues”

t is believed the musical term “the blues” was derived from mysticism involving blue indigo, which was used by many West African cultures in death and mourning ceremonies where all the mourners’ garments were dyed indigo blue to indicate suffering. Of course blue and suffering also combine notably in Picasso’s blue period. A PAINTING FROM PICASSO’S BLUE PERIOD

FOUR HUNDRED MILES FROM MOROCCO THE NOMADIC TUAREG PEOPLE OF THE SAHARA DRESS IN INDIGO AND ARE THEMSELVES TINTED BLUE FROM THE INDIGO DYE THAT HAS RUBBED OFF ON THEM (ALFRED WEIDINGER)

THE MUSÉE YVES SAINT LAURENT MARRAKECH (© FONDATION JARDIN MAJORELLE, NICOLAS MATHEUS)

Indigo Fanaticism W

hole towns have been devoted to the color with every home washed in it. The word indigo is simply the Latin word for India, and in the Indian city of Jodhpur, most of the homes are painted indigo (which used to mean a Brahmin lived there). Likewise, the Moroccan town of Chefchaouen is entirely indigo. Some say the indigo pigment represents the deep blue of the Mediterranean while others say the indigo wash on these homes originally signified they were occupied by Jews.

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l e t’s be g i n wi t h a f in ishin g tou ch

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Indigo’s special sauce was, unfortunately, slavery. U

nlike most other colors that are concocted from simple plant-based dyes or insect-based dyes, indigo is synthesized quite differently, almost magically. In nature, indigo presents itself as a normal green shrub and is not indigo in color whatsoever until the plant goes through a complicated fermentation and oxidization process. This alchemy was developed and refined by Africans (among other cultures) then imported to the Colonies by African captives brought to this country. Those enslaved people, “indigo slaves,” were specifically prized for their knowledge of indigo chemistry and were advertised as such. Along our lower Atlantic southern seaboard, indigo was planted along what is today known as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor because it grew well and there was a huge market for it in Britain. (The Gullah people are descendants of West African people enslaved to work on plantations.) In many Southern colonies, indigo was the most prolific crop, typically only surpassed by rice and/or cotton. In certain times in places like South Carolina, it was the number one most profitable crop – and at some points solidified indigo cakes replaced the local currency. Indigo slaves brought with them not only the knowledge of how to cultivate indigo but the science of how to ferment it – aka reduce it down so it was deep and rich and colorfast. This reduction involved a labor-intensive process and a business model that only worked in a world that condoned slavery. There is a self-written book called The Narrative of James Roberts about an indigo slave who became a soldier under General Washington, and then sadly returned to being a slave after the Revolutionary War. He describes American indigo slavery thusly: “From fifty to sixty hands work in the indigo factory; and such is the effect of indigo upon the lungs of the laborers, that they never live over seven years.” Makes you think twice about your blue jeans, which for many years, were dyed with indigo. In 1815, the original American flag – spoiler alert – was not sewn by Betsy Ross, which is an urban myth gone national; it was dyed red with crushed up cochineal beetles, used natural cotton for the white, and plantation-grown, enslaved labor-harvested indigo for the blue.

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The Georgia Experiment and Ossabaw Island H

ere’s some weird science. At first, Georgia was the only colony with a prohibition on slavery. It was founded by a gentleman named James Oglethorpe who envisioned Georgia as a sort of experimental utopia that would provide employment to anyone who wanted it and at the same time prohibited slavery. Oglethorpe’s anti-slavery stance was formed by his reading of one of the first slave narratives, that of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a West African prince who was kidnapped by slave traders and subsequently spent two years as a slave in Maryland. When Oglethorpe read the narrative, he repurchased Diallo, freed him, and returned him to Senegal. Afterward, and at the urging of Oglethorpe and his fellow colonial trustees, the British Parliament formally codified Georgia’s prohibition on slavery in 1735, two years after the colony’s founding. Unfortunately, Georgia’s ban on slavery didn’t even last two decades, when economic pressure from Georgia’s emergent planter class forced the British Parliament to reverse itself. The reason Georgia’s planter overlords wanted slavery legalized was because the area was particularly wellsuited for cultivating indigo, but processing the crop was so labor intensive it only penciled out with the conscription of unpaid labor, i.e., slaves. Once slavery was legalized in Georgia, the entirety of Ossabaw Island, to give just one example, became an indigo plantation. Thus it was indigo that was the driving force behind the legalization of slavery in Georgia. Indigo is imbued with many political cross currents, and those cross currents often followed the trade winds of the Dutch East India and the Dutch West India trade routes. SOUTH CAROLINA’S INDIGO STATE FLAG. STILL.

AN INDIGO PLANTATION IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES, LATE 1700S

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SCENES OF THE BLUE MEDINA THAT IS CHEFCHAOUEN, MOROCCO

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Levi’s jeans were dyed with natural indigo until after the Civil War when indigo was artificially synthesized in the 1880s by German chemist Adolf von Baeyer, who won the Nobel Prize in 1905. After Baeyer’s discovery, for almost the next 150 years, synthetic indigo ran rampant. So of course natural indigo as a Southern crop quickly became no longer economically viable. Synthetic indigo also took a toll on the earth. As a synthetic product, indigo is petroleum based with the additives of formaldehyde and cyanide. Synthetic indigo also changed the geography of where indigo garments were manufactured, often to third-world countries with fewer restrictions on polluting the earth, its waters, and its ground tables.

Until now F

rom Ossabaw Island 500 miles west takes us to Memphis, Tennessee, where today a small but fast-growing company Stony Creek Colors is bringing back naturally occurring indigo crops and manufacturing dyes but paying a fair wage, and the process is so clean that the indigo can be processed right in the middle of urban centers – where jobs are needed. Any clothing manufacturer with environmental consciousness can substitute Stony Creek’s dyes for synthetic chemical dyes, which is why Stony Creek has had success partnering with Wrangler jeans and, locally, with both Lucky Brand and Patagonia. AYUBA SULEIMAN DIALLO In Northern California, the biotech firm Tinctorium has made great inroads creating deep, natural indigo via the use of engineered bacteria and is collaborating with the designer Adriano Goldschmied of AG Jeans (who sits on their board). And in Japan, which is also indigo obsessed, the company Buaisou is making some of the finest Japanese denim using naturally occurring indigo. Designer Katie Leede is encouraged by the new wave of interest in responsibly sourced fair-wage indigo. Says Leede, “Indigo evokes so much natural beauty and wonder. The history of its cultivation in this country is obviously fraught. But I feel like with this new batch of naturally occurring, sensibly harvested indigo we’re finally on a good path – for the planet and for all the organisms that live here. Especially humans.”

FABRICS FROM DESIGNER KATIE LEEDE

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PEPPER HILL ENCLAVE OF MONTECITO

tunning Mountain Views in the Coveted Pepper Hill Enclave of Montecito! Experience the expansive mountain vistas and seamless indoor-outdoor living of this gorgeous Spanish Mediterranean property. Enter the front door and you are greeted by the spacious, sunken, living room. Perfect for entertaining guests or enjoying a game of billiards. You will flow naturally from the living room to the large terraced patios. A grand kitchen area awaits all with breakfast bar, cozy sitting area, romantic fireplace, breakfast nook with awe-inspiring mountain views and the formal dining room to bring everyone together.

This spectacular residence offers four bedrooms and three bathrooms in the main house. The bedrooms and bathrooms live in wings offering privacy from children or house guests; all gathering back to the main living areas of the estate. Upstairs, the master bedroom suite boasts stunning mountain views, soothing fireplace, walk-in closet, and a tranquil office/ bedroom with Juliet balcony.

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SANTA BARBARA 1323 STATE STREET SANTA BARBARA, CA 93101

RON’S DESK AT MARMOL RADZINER: “I THINK OUR STUDIO IS THE PERFECT PLACE TO CREATE,” HE SAYS. “WE ALL SIT TOGETHER IN A SOARING SPACE WITH ABUNDANT DAYLIGHT AND FRESH AIR. IT IS BEAUTIFUL BUT NOT TOO PERFECT – A PLACE WHERE WE CAN BE COMFORTABLY MESSY AS WE GO THROUGH THE CHALLENGING AND SATISFYING PROCESS OF TRYING TO MAKE GOOD ARCHITECTURE.”

(PHOTO BY KAREN RADZINER)

ARCHITECT RON RADZINER DOES A LITTLE WITH A LOT, INTENTIONALLY STORY BY RON RADZINER

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he cracked asphalt on the streets of Montecito is not bounded by curbs. The asphalt ends as it is met by the earth, then giving way to a stone wall, a live oak, some boulders, and clues about the obscured landscapes beyond. I am endlessly scanning from side to side as I drive the streets to catch glimpses of these gardens, doing my best not to run off the road. They unfold continuously with moments of brightly flowering succulents, majestic trees, and weathered native shrubs. Montecito has the best gardens of any town I know. The residents of this community appreciate their outdoor space as much or more than they covet their indoor space. The houses are pleasant and often beautiful, but in this town, the gardens are what capture my attention. It makes sense, with its gentle Mediterranean climate – why not spend more time in the garden than in the house? Nestled between the mountains to the north and the ocean to the south, Montecito’s ideal perch has attracted humans in search of la dolce vita for 13,000 years and counting. The landscape is a wonderful mix of dry brush and foggy coast, with soaring hills, natural hot springs, and cool mornings. It is not surprising that the area inspired landscape architects in the late 19th and early 20th century, such as Ralph Stevens, Lockwood de Forest, and Florence Yoch. They developed a style known as California Regionalism, in which the garden was, rather than regimented, designed to conform to natural topography and climate through the use of native and droughttolerant species, the integration of indoors and outdoors, and water conservation. Unlike more manicured and traditional gardens, the design was less formal or symmetrical, and blurred the garden into the existing landscape. These are principles that we continue to embrace today.

RON RADZINER (PHOTO BY ARI MICHELSON)

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he first home and garden in Montecito we designed was a winter home for a family from Minnesota. The peaceful site was covered with beautiful, mature coast live oak trees and a too-common understory of non-native groundcovers and shrubs. In order to preserve all the significant oaks on the property, the area where we could build the home was quite restricted. But that was exactly what made the site so compelling. The house was going to have to be deferential to the landscape that surrounded it. Fortunately, we like it this way and it seems like most residents of Montecito do, too. We carefully positioned the house and pool in the clearings between the oaks and boulders. The huge boulders weren’t just found on the surface, but were discovered abruptly as foundations were dug into the earth. Although the unexpected cost to break up the exhumed boulders is maddening, the opportunity to integrate the beautiful amber rocks into the house design is a gift that just becomes one more way to connect the house back to the site in this town.

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DROUGHT-TOLERANT PLANTS AND A BACKDROP OF OAK TREES SURROUND THE POOL TERRACE AT THIS LILAC DRIVE RESIDENCE

(COURTESY MARMOL RADZINER)

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RENDERINGS OF THE TORO CANYON RESIDENCE (COURTESY MARMOL RADZINER)

ith its natural setting of oak woodlands and chaparral, and a climate that offers freedom from the harsh constraints of winter, Montecito has been a place of easy experimentation and inspiration. Whether a Spanish Colonial house designed by Santa Barbara architect George Washington Smith or a midcentury modern home by Los Angeles architect Richard Neutra, interior spaces open onto exterior courtyards and terraces, and gardens complement and reinforce the natural qualities of the site. Neutra’s Tremaine House, completed in 1948, is a wonderful example of the integration of house and garden. Tucked into a hillside of native oak trees, Neutra and landscape architect Lockwood de Forest merged the house with the surroundings through the use of wide expanses of glass, natural sandstone walls, and exposed boulders.

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ven as we build modern homes with contemporary forms and simple materials such as stone, wood, and metal, it is important to respect the existing site and allow it to guide the design of the house. For a home we are close to completing in Toro Canyon, the building volumes are partially submerged into the hillside to follow the natural contours of the site. The house and pool are terraced down the slope, while green roofs planted with native vegetation connect the residence to the landscape below. These connections emphasize nature and the native landscape. The green roof is a design concept that may be as old as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or early Scandinavian houses made of sod, but it is still used in modern architecture for its ecological benefits and improvements to livability. Green roofs provide the opportunity to integrate landscape, very literally, into the architecture. The roof can mimic local coastal bluffs using native species like grasses, succulents, and meadow sedge. This blending of landscape and architecture has an unexpected effect when seen on the roof of a house, creating playful connections to both the indoors and the garden outside.

PHOTO BY CHARLIE RUBIN

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“I AM FORTUNATE THAT MY DESK IN OUR STUDIO FACES A BANK OF PERPETUALLY OPEN WINDOWS TAKING IN THE GREENERY OF FICUS TREES AND THE DAILY ONSHORE BREEZES,” SAYS RADZINER. (PHOTO BY KAREN RADZINER)

ust like the curb-less streets of Montecito, planted areas can dissolve effortlessly into the natural surroundings and mountain views beyond individual property boundaries. A garden design works best when it allows some of the chaos of nature to break free from the hedges. The structure of the house is well-built and will most certainly endure for many years to come. But ultimately, the landscape will always prevail. THE ARCHITECTURE FIRM’S 2019 SITE: MARMOL RADZINER IN THE LANDSCAPE

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“History belongs to all of us, and considering Somalia’s future development without taking into account its history means to transform us into orphans of the past.” – Yusuf Shegow MOGADISHU

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rebuilding mogadishu STORY BY ROB HILL

THREE VISIONARIES ARE REBUILDING A CIVIL WAR-TORN CITY FROM THE INSIDE AND OUT. IS THE GREAT ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE IN SOMALIA WORTH PRESERVING OR NOT?

m The ruins of Palazzo Mediterraneo (Courtesy Omar Degan)

hen you think of Mogadishu, you probably have visions of Ridley Scott’s sunbaked, orange-tinted dystopia in Black Hawk Down – a city shattered by the toils of civil war, poverty, political upheaval, and greed-driven dictators looting resources while their country fell into wistful neglect. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, at one point in time in the early to mid-20th century, Mogadishu was a sister riviera with some of the best Mediterranean and neo-colonial architecture in the world. Only its waters were bluer and its beaches perhaps more postcard ready. The port city, locally known as Xamar or Hamar, was once dubbed the “The White Pearl of the Indian Ocean” and the “Crown Jewel” of Italy’s colonial grab across the Mediterranean. Mogadishu was a bustling and elegant Riviera metropolis heavily built up by Mussolini and punctuated by breathtaking fascist Italianate architecture, modernist art deco palaces, Arab-Italian forts, sprawling lush gardens, and grand theaters and mosques. In the 1920s, the Cattedrale of Mogadiscio was designed by famed Italian architect Antonio Vandone, a handsome Norman Gothic revival-style church based on the Romanesque Cathedral in Sicilian Cefalu. In Somalia, the Italians created that nation’s first unified sewage system, its first hospital, the first paved roads, the first airport, and built the Arch of Umberto, which, miraculously, still stands today, though its tattered and pockmarked state is a far cry from its birth in the 1930s. Towering palm trees lined the boulevards bookended by geometric crisp white edifices. Its sandy beaches and wide promenades, literally named after Mussolini, were dotted with wealthy Sicilians soaking up the strong sun in the shadow of Old Harbor’s spectacular Italian-built lighthouse, a landmark monument proudly welcoming visitors to this burgeoning jewel on the Horn of Africa. (The once magnificent lighthouse is now a frayed and battered ghost-shell of itself, another victim of war-torn neglect.) To be sure, Mogadishu had all the makings of a dreamy, far-flung outpost, the kind of exotic spot novelists, colonialists, and architecture junkies salivate over.

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Ilwad Elman, founder of the Elman Peace Project and three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Omar Degan of DO Architecture Group

THREE VISIONARIES TRYING TO REBUILD IN A FAILED STATE

Yusuf Shegow, head of the Somali Architecture project

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his is the Mogadishu that a handful of visionaries, architects, activists, and volunteers have set their sights on both restoring and building anew. The task is fraught with challenges. Mogadishu now boasts more than two million residents, but if you thought your supply chain woes were a challenge, try building in a failed state. First, what does it even mean for a centuries-old nation to be a “failed state”? It means there’s no stable or even continuous government, national or local, which means there are few continuous essential services – things we take for granted such as regular garbage pickup or an airport that stays open. The absence of an organized power structure has been filled instead by warlords, fundamentalist extremist groups, and pirates. And not of the jovial Jack Sparrow variety. Omar Degan (doarchitecturegroup.com), a Somali who was born in Italy and studied architecture at the Politecnico di Torino and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the author of the book Mogadishu Through the Eyes of an Architect, came to Mogadishu five years ago, bringing with him his prowess in sustainability, emergency architecture, and post-war reformation. He at once blends the city’s lost elegance with splashes of modernism. One example of his work was transforming a space on the outskirts of Mogadishu that was to become a supermarket instead into a cultural hub. According to Degan, the multitiered space, named Salsabiil, which includes a café and restaurant, is both traditional and contemporary.

PAUL WILLIAMS DESIGN | OJAI, CA Built in 1927, this Spanish Colonial Revival home has been lovingly restored in the spirit of its famous architect while upgrading all infrastructure, wiring and plumbing to modern standards. One of only two Paul Williams homes in Ojai, it perfectly encapsulates his values of balance, purpose and proportion to create an intimate family home that takes full advantage of its ideal location and natural environment, including views of the Topa Topa mountains. With 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, an office, a detached studio, a pool and an expansive veranda, it combines spaciousness, functionality and aesthetics in a rare blend. Custom original tiles decorate the many ﬁreplaces and bathrooms, designed to integrate with the architecture. The lushly landscaped, park-like grounds include a grape arbor, an orchard and a bocce court. The beauty and wholeness of this truly unique refuge will bring effortless peace to your heart.

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Ilwad Elman helps Somali youth drop the gun and pick up the pen

ED Elman with her mentor Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations (Courtesy Ilwad Elman)

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am by nature a minimalist,” he notes. “I don’t add unnecessary things to my projects, everything must have a function and use. There is no waste in materials or space…everything is carefully studied. “I didn’t start my architectural journey in Somalia with the idea of rebuilding the city to its ‘former glory’ – history can’t be changed, and surely, it’s not my intention to bring back the past entirely but more working on the idea of creating a better future that takes the good from the past while embracing the contemporary way of living and creating a new architecture.” While Degan does his best to build despite the daily hazards of building in Somalia (car bombings are not infrequent), BritishSomali architecture student Yusuf Shegow is using 3D modeling as a guide to rebuild the city digitally. Shegow, born in Mogadishu but raised in Kenya and then moved to the United Kingdom, studied architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture. When he returned to Somalia a decade ago, he became enamored with the detritus of the buildings and dreamt about what they once looked like – from the Arab influence to the Italian neocolonial period to the Art Deco

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Amid the great tragedy is still great majesty (Courtesy Omar Degan)

“We’re getting traumatized kids into the water and teaching them to surf. It’s something we modeled after American treatments for PTSD only there’s no ‘P’ in our PTSD – our problems aren’t ‘post.’” – Ilwad Elman of the ’30s and the Independence years in the ’60s. His parents told him tales of how modern, beautiful, and vibrant the city used to be. Shegow had an idea: He’d use the photos he’d found of Mogadishu before the war to make 3D architectural models – to memorialize and create a virtual record of the structures that existed before the decades-long incredibly destructive civil war. “The majority of the selected buildings were based on image availability,” he said. “Luckily these buildings were historic and well-known throughout the city and were well documented; it was easy to get access to these images. For some of the buildings that were destroyed, we managed to find a few images of them from before so we could reconstruct them digitally without a site survey.”

Elman’s sister Iman Elman, the youngest female commander in the Somalia National Armed Forces (Courtesy Ilwad Elman)

o Shegow’s surprise, his work, including a vibrant Instagram page, greatly interested the Somalian community in the UK and beyond because it gave expat Somalis a sense of where the city was headed and a connection they had lost. Dubbed Somali Architecture (somaliarchitecture.com), the project now includes other architects based in Italy, the UK, and the United States, including Madina Scacchi, an Italian Somali who joined the project as a way of “reconnecting with her past” as well as Iman Mohamed and Ahmed Mussa. However, like Degan, the project isn’t just about reconstructing the past, it’s also got its eye on the future. Shegow hopes the 3D models will serve as a guide for future development, providing city planners with important reference points as they rebuild the city. “Somali Architecture started as a platform to share images of prewar Somalia and evolved into a research project involving the recreation of historic buildings into 3D form,” Shegow says. “We’ve now digitized five districts in Mogadishu and other cities in Somalia.” A personal favorite for Shegow is the National Theatre, a chic, modern prefab concrete building that was a gift from Mao Zedong in 1967. While it was largely bomb-ravaged by war – and even became a munitions depot for the rebels – the theater’s restoration is very symbolic in the rebuilding of the city, as poets, filmmakers, and writers gather to tell the stories of their beloved city. And then there’s the infamous Mogadishu Cathedral. It’s been decimated by war, too. However, Shegow and his team have 3D modeled the structure into a War Museum, bullet holes intact as a vivid reminder.

Secondo Lido Beach from above (Courtesy Omar Degan)

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“The War Museum could be much more than just a museum. It would be a real educational hub where people can learn about the history of Somalia. History is an interpretation of both facts and memory. It is fundamental to let the future generations understand the importance of history to give them the right tools to think and act well in daily life. History belongs to all of us, and considering Somalia’s future development without considering its history means to transform us into orphans of the past.”

The Mogadishu Cathedral (same as below) as it looks today after decades of civil war and strife (Courtesy Omar Degan)

THEN THERE ARE THOSE HEALING AND REBUILDING THE HUMAN SPIRIT

lwad Elman, the daughter of peace activist parents, is taking a different approach to rebuilding Mogadishu and greater Somalia. Her father, Elman Ali Ahmed, was Somalia’s bestknown peace activist famous for the phrase “Drop the gun, pick up the pen.” He was assassinated in 1996 as was her activist sister, Almaas Elman, who was struck down in 2019.

ED Italian fascist colonialists built a lot of Somali infrastructure, including this seafront promenade named after, literally, Benito Mussolini

This postage stamp gives an indication of the relationship between Somalia and fascist Italy (Smithsonian Institution)

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Constructed in 1928, much of the Cattedrale di Mogadiscio was destroyed in 2008

Continuing her father’s work and even expanding upon it, Elman, 32 years old and thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is trying to help rebuild Somali people from the inside out – and to this end founded the Elman Peace Project (elmanpeace.org) with her mother, Fartuun Adan. Elman Peace funds many programs in Somalia but certainly its most ambitious and daunting one is creating rape crisis centers, which previously did not exist in Somalia – a country rated the second worst place to be a woman on earth, where victims are blamed and shamed and where rape is mostly not prosecuted. And Elman Peace doesn’t stop at the crisis of rape. It has followed up with a Girls Leadership Academy in honor of Elman’s late sister, providing four years of free education for 200 girls. And Elman is equally involved in skills training both for women and girls who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, but also for young men, the Elman organization is disarming and rehabilitating them to become ambassadors for peace instead of spoilers of it. To this end, Elman Peace is raising funds to build a vocational training center and recently hosted renowned architect Sir David Adjaye in Mogadishu (Adjaye designed the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., among other notable commissions) where Elman shared her grand vision with him.

“ In Somalia, environmental issues are being exploited by terrorist groups to increase the vulnerability of certain communities – they want to create more displaced people from which to recruit.”

– Ilwad Elman

THE ROAD TO PEACE IS PAVED WITH JOBS

lman built a relationship with Adjaye when she learned the architect visited every African country except Somalia for a book about African architecture. So Elman, force of nature that she is, made it her business to get Adjaye to visit Mogadishu. Inspired by Elman’s vision, the two have begun collaborating on bringing this important project to life. Though Elman already offers vocational training, with Adjaye, they’ve envisioned a state-of-the-art vocational training institute to be built as soon as fundraising allows. Unemployment among the youth is intrinsically linked to the perpetuation of conflict, therefore it is a critical problem to solve for there to be peace in Somalia. The Elman Peace organization has grown into Somalia’s fastest-scaling youth organization, providing free services in education, disarmament, and job creation. And it’s working – 98 percent of Elman’s business partners say they would hire Elman Peace graduates again. But there are still more crises in Somalia, so Elman Peace has its hands in other pots Salsabiil, a cultural hub designed by Omar Degan (Courtesy Omar Degan)

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ED The Secondo Lido lighthouse and Palazzo Mediterraneo (Courtesy Omar Degan)

as well, such as trying to thwart an unexpected collaboration between extreme climate conditions and terrorist groups. “Somalia is disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and frequently in drought,” she says. “And these environmental issues are being exploited by terrorist groups to increase the vulnerability of certain communities – they want to create more displaced people from which to recruit. We have extremist groups such as al-Shabab poisoning water wells so they have more climate refugees ripe for radicalization. We already have half a million internally displaced people in Mogadishu. But estimates are that number will more than double due to climate inhospitality.” If Elman Peace didn’t have its hands full already, they’re also working hard to introduce mental health maintenance and treatment to a culture not necessarily fertile to those concepts.

Acts of terrorism in Somalia are still not infrequent but the rebuilders are committed to a path forward

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SURF THERAPY

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Surfing helps Somali youth deal with CTSD – currently or continuously traumatized stress disorder (Photos courtesy Ilwad Elman)

e are working on decolonizing the wellness space, creating access to mental health services, and generating a discussion on this subject that didn’t previously exist in our community,” says Elman. “We are doing this by amplifying indigenous and localized practices grounded in both science and the culture, and introducing new approaches such as sports, art, yoga, and surfing to treat the somatic symptoms of constantly renewing trauma. Somalia has the longest coastline in all of Africa. In our religion, there are so many messages about how the ocean heals – how the ocean dissipates negative spirits and cleanses us of harmful thoughts – so we’re getting traumatized kids into the water and teaching them to surf. It’s something we modeled after American surf treatments for PTSD, only there’s no ‘P’ in our PTSD – our problems aren’t ‘post’ traumatic; we’re still very much living them. There’s progress and regress, but ultimately, hopefully progress prevails.”

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a t r a D i t i o n o f e xc e l l e n c e i n M o n t e c i to & s a n ta B a r B a r a r e a l e s tat e J o h n M c G o wa n & a s h l e y M c G o wa n 805.637.8661 w w w .M c G o wa n P a rt n e r s . c o M c a l Dre 00893030/02041055 ©2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

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LOCALLY OWNED | GLOBALLY C ON N ECTED | VILLAG ES IT E .C O M | D RE 0 120 6 7 3 4 M O NTECITO 805.96 9.8 9 00 | SAN TA BARBARA + MESA 805 . 6 81 . 8 80 0 | SANTA YNEZ 805 . 6 8 8 . 1620 All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

MONTECITO’S

“ PART OF THE CHALLENGE OF THIS SHOOT IS THAT BRUCE IS AN AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHER, OBVIOUSLY. I KNEW MY PICTURES OF THE HOUSE WOULD NEVER BE BETTER THAN HIS. SO I MADE THE DECISION THAT MY LANE WOULD BE TO SHOOT THE PEOPLE,” SAYS PHOTOGRAPHER DEWEY NICKS. “IN THIS SHOT, WE WERE IN BRUCE’S THEATER WHILE AN IMAGE OF THE HOUSE WAS PROJECTED. BRUCE AND ROBIN WERE JUST LEANING ON LADDERS TALKING ABOUT A DRONE SHOT BRUCE WAS GOING TO GET WHEN A GREAT OPPORTUNITY PRESENTED ITSELF.”

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AMERICAN RIVIERA

INTERGALACTIC, PLANETARY

ever in the history of Santa Barbara – and rarely in this country – has a building been as heavily anticipated as owner Bruce Heavin and architect Robin Donaldson’s futuristic S Fans TOofRarchitecture Y B Y Land E SrealFestate I R Ehave S Tawaited E I N the abode’s Hill House in Montecito. unveiling – it already claims iconic status – like an album drop. As someone who’s been to Hill House more than a score of times, I’m here to tell you that – it turns out – the collective bated breath surrounding Hill House is...is…

STORY BY LES FIRESTEIN ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRUCE HEAVIN

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100% DESERVED.

n fact, almost everything about Hill House is unusual, bespoke, and off the chain. It is nothing less than Montecito’s moonshot – and even, to an extent, architecture’s. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne has called Hill House “the most important residence built in the last 20 years.” Full stop. Thanks to Heavin and Donaldson, what was once “sleepy” Montecito is having its mic drop.

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WORKERS INSTALLING REBAR AT HILL HOUSE.

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TECHNICAL DRAWINGS COURTESY SHUBINDONALDSON

ROBIN DONALDSON IN HIS OFFICE WITH A MODEL OF HILL HOUSE; GEHRY TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPED CRITICAL SOFTWARE THAT MADE HILL HOUSE POSSIBLE. “IT ALLOWS YOU TO SEE WHAT HAS HAPPENED, WHAT IS HAPPENING, AND WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN ALL AT THE SAME TIME,” SAYS SAMEER KASHYAP OF GEHRY TECHNOLOGIES, “AND THEN VERIFY IT ALL TO WITHIN 1/32 OF AN INCH.”

WHERE DID IT COME FROM AND HOW DID IT GET HERE?

uilding in Montecito is a blessing and a challenge. On the plus side, you’re in Montecito. On the other hand, our local house brand is called Spanish Colonial, though that phrase should probably retire to the unmarked warehouse of Confederate statues. But I digress. Montecito has one of the oldest and most daunting architectural oversight committees, with roots dating back 100 years. So how did the futuristic Hill House thread its way through the gauntlet of MBAR, the daunting Montecito Board of Architectural Review? Might it actually have stealth mode? Or was there, perhaps…a Jedi mind trick?

RENDERING COURTESY SHUBINDONALDSON

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A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY… ...CALLED PASADENA

n large part, Hill House is the long-gestating brainchild of artist/entrepre-nerd Bruce Heavin – the son of a McDonnell Douglas aeronautic engineer – who made a living as an illustrator with a specialty in gospel record album covers. (For you kids, records are those music recordings pressed into vinyl that are sold at the back of Urban Outfitters right next to the SpongeBob socks.) In 1986, Heavin wound up at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. He had Lynda Weinman, whom he would help become the “Lynda” of Lynda.com, as his teacher. Many years after Bruce graduated, their platonic relationship blossomed into both an enterprise…and a romance. Call it geek love. Picture these hip, tech, bohemi-nerds living in this incredible ’90s Pasadena marinade equal parts art and science. Five miles from their love nest is Cal Tech, Jet Propulsion Lab, ArtCenter, and the Norton Simon Museum...with the Rose Bowl swap meet thrown in for thrift cred. Professor Weinman had a knack for understanding and simplifying tech and is self-taught. One day, she had an epiphany regarding teaching computer skills to civilians – but doing so online instead of in a physical classroom. Bruce helped her bring the idea to fruition. Though 50/50 partners, they called their company Lynda.com. And the thing worked like gangbusters. Howard Stern took a Lynda course. Marthastewart.com sent students Lynda’s way. Lynda.com “went viral” at a time when that phrase was still used just for diseases. With steady growth, over the course of about a decade, Lynda.com became one of our little enclave’s largest employers. And the way these things go, when you hit $10 million in revenue, that triggers alarm bells – aka interest from investors, who were brought on in 2007. Later, in 2015, LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for a lot of money – i.e., 10 figures with three commas and no decimal. When the surprising windfall came, it presented Heavin with the perfect opportunity to test out all his ideas about how humans should habitate – and joyfully express it in architecture (aka what you and I would call a “home”). Weinman wanted Heavin to have that joy too, thinking he never got to sing his aria from the opera house that was Lynda.com. She says, “Bruce had a burning desire to build his own house since I first met him in the ’90s. In the 25-plus years that we’ve been together, we’ve never lived anywhere where Bruce didn’t think things should be in different places than they were. For me, it was exciting to see what he could do unfettered. I’ve always been in awe of his creativity and vision, so part of this project was an opportunity to see that come to life.” To hear Heavin tell it, “We wanted to design a house that would improve the land and environment around it. We didn’t want to build a box that broke the skyline at the top of the ridge but create a structure that was sensitive and sympathetic to its environs.” As a result of this goal, much more time was spent designing the house than building it.

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RENDERING COURTESY OF SHUBIN DONALDSON ARCHITECTS

INTERIOR DESIGN

PHOTO BY ROBIN DONALDSON

ARCHITECT THOM MAYNE VISITS ROBIN DONALDSON AT HILL HOUSE SITE. MAYNE WON ARCHITECTURE’S NOBEL, THE PRITZKER PRIZE, IN 2005. MAYNE HAS TAUGHT AT HARVARD, YALE, COLUMBIA, AND THE ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL HE COFOUNDED, SCI-ARC. MAYNE IS A GLOBAL TALENT WHO HAS BUILT MANY NOTABLE STRUCTURES AROUND THE WORLD. HE HAS SAID OF HEAVIN AND DONALDSON’S HILL HOUSE: “IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RESIDENCE BUILT IN THE LAST 20 YEARS.”

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PHOTOS BY ROBIN DONALDSON

eavin went to Robin Donaldson, an architect the couple worked with building Lynda.com offices and other home designs over the past 10 years – and with whom they felt extremely comfortable. “After contemplating the property for months, we had a realization. That is, the house should be a hill – and that we should easily be able to go on top of it to enjoy the views,” Heavin says. “I asked ShubinDonaldson to experiment with this Hill House idea and said it should be the equivalent of an architectural guitar solo that just went off on its own for the beauty of itself. Ultimately that direction took a few years to morph and manifest – the home morphing from slightly subterranean to a highly embedded, mostly subterranean concrete structure almost entirely covered in earth and plants in order to hide as and ultimately be…a hill.” Donaldson elaborates, “Bruce and Lynda are artists focused on ideas, not things. Bruce said he wanted ‘an escape from the expected through serious play into something new and wonderful.’ But to do that, first we really had to develop a new architectural language.” The meta plan for this machine for living was not to remove a lot of dirt but push it off to the side. Get the massive foundation into the ground. Build the house – literally embed most of it

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

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PHOTO BY ROBIN DONALDSON

ADMITTEDLY, THE FRONT DOOR MAY VEX TRICK OR TREATERS. BUT THANKS TO A LOT OF ENGINEERING, EVEN A CHILD CAN OPEN IT.

“ THERE’S NOTHING OFF THE RACK. THERE IS NO RACK. BRUCE AND ROBIN ARE RECONCEIVING THE RACK.” – MEG JOANNIDES, INTERIOR DESIGNER 150

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into the mountain. Then cover the hill back over with original soil and indigenous vegetation. That might seem like a lot of effort to tread lightly. But Heavin and Donaldson are looking at a different kind of timeline. Unlike the stick and stucco structures that surround it, this sand dollar-shaped domicile’s carbon footprint needs to be measured and amortized over the millennia that it will exist, like the concretebuilt Roman Colosseum, the Great (concrete) Wall of China. The Pantheon. The Guggenheim (again, concrete). And the spiritual forbear of Hill House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s (concrete) Fallingwater. “After a year of studies and ideas, there was a breaking point where all the traditional box shapes of a modern house evaporated and we realized our existing design language was inadequate,” says Heavin. The fact that the house was shaped like a little hill also informed us that the house needed to better blend in with the earth and the nature of our beautiful Montecito surroundings.” He continues, “In the end, it felt like we had no other choice than to build this earth- and plant-covered subterranean structure. Even through the construction process, we were being informed by the earth as we dug out for footings and uncovered thousands of large sandstone boulders. We felt compelled to include most of those boulders into our landscape and even into the house itself.” During this protracted design phase, some interesting kinks had to be worked out as well. “Originally, we wanted to use curved glass windows that were reflective for energy efficiency,” says Heavin. “But when we got the sun studies of how the sun would focus its power along a curved mirrored surface at certain times of the year, we found a low winter sun would have a prismatic effect – it would heat the ground between 500 to 600 degrees.” Which is great if you want to barbecue on the ground, but bad for feet. “We switched to flat-panel glass, and the temperatures dropped to normal.” While Hill House’s shape is atypical for Montecito, on the other hand, the Donaldson-Heavin design doesn’t suffer from Edifice Complex, which is likely one reason the project didn’t get mired in MBAR’s architectural review. Another is, according to Donaldson, that “MBAR is a board focused on quality. Architectural merit is first and foremost for them. And as a quality board, they like to see quality things. It may surprise people, but I think so long as you’re building something that’s thoughtfully conceived, that seems like it will endure, obviously there is room here for more than just Spanish architecture, which is why Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra and Morphosis were all able to build here.” That, but there’s also the theory MBAR may have been skeptical Hill House would ever actually get built. In fact, one board member said to Donaldson after the project got its necessary signoffs, “Good luck with this. Once in a while, we approve homes with green roofs, but they never seem to get built.” Note to self: Never underestimate Bruce Heavin or Robin Donaldson.

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BUILDING PAD MEETS LAUNCHPAD

nyone who has built a home knows that after receiving architectural approval but before one can put shovel to dirt, you need to submit your engineering to receive building permits, but very few engineers can execute or even conceptualize enormous forms of concrete in space, especially when those shapes are “bending” in three separate dimensional planes simultaneously. Forms that are “wickedly complex” as Donaldson describes them. But I’ll tell you who can engineer that…

THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS ARCHITECT, FRANK GEHRY, THAT’S WHO

kay maybe not Mr. Gehry himself, but Gehry has made an excellent living from conceiving and executing dramatic, seemingly impossible architecture in some of the greatest manifestations of the creative spirit. Early on, Gehry learned that almost no engineer had the computational power – literally the terabytes – to manifest his soaring shapes to make them buildable. So Gehry founded his own engineering company, Gehry Technologies, essentially to get engineering to catch up with his unusual architectural designs. The complex programming of curvilinear shapes came from aerospace, which Gehry Tech adapted so he could build the Bilbao in Spain.

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All this space-age, literally aerospace-based programming has allowed the builders to construct all aspects of Hill House to within 1/16 of an inch. That’s pretty darned precise. The other reason you need Gehry Tech is when you’re building a structure from parametrically shaped poured concrete, someone needs a map of what the heck is going on inside those giant slabs after they cure. Otherwise, to put it in Lynda language, it would be like creating a computer program that locks out its own creator. Which recalls Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine. It’s also important to know what’s going on inside your walls when, say, you need to hang a picture. Gehry Tech allows you to see the otherwise unseeable.

BUILDING THE MACHINE FOR LIVING

fter Gehry’s engineering is submitted to Santa Barbara County Planning, there is a maze of bureaucracy to procure permits. MATT Construction got the general contracting gig because they’ve fought wars – they are basically Seal Team 6, and, importantly, they’re still undefeated. Appropriately enough, MATT has worked on several Gehry structures over the years (like Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Broad Museum) so, being veterans, they utilize this time to – as they say in military parlance – “prepare the battlefield.” That means they pull the trigger on various subcontractors. Landscape designer Eric Nagelmann developed a full on-site nursery to cultivate and acclimate all the unique vegetation for the planted roof microclimate. Various other test sites (floor, rust) were prepared. There’s a full-size mock-up (maybe 15-foot) parametric window embedded within a foot-thick concrete frame, standing

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“ THERE ARE SO MANY GREAT IMAGES OF HILL HOUSE, BUT THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES,” SAYS LES FIRESTEIN.

around the job site like a head on Easter Island just to make sure the whole fenestration system works. Because if any of these notinexpensive windows get built wrong, that mailer coupon for discount replacement windows ain’t exactly gonna work here. In a similar vein, other subcontractors and vendors need a running start to keep up with the ambition of the project. For instance, Hunter Douglas is providing outdoor roller shades to mitigate heat load on the massive expanses of glass. But Hill House’s shades span so much wider than normal that Hunter Douglas will have to newly manufacture the brackets with which to support them. And the guy who’s doing the front door seems to need about a year to fabricate it because the door to the Apollo capsule had less going on inside. Also this front door weighs about 1,000 pounds, needs bespoke hinges that have their own clutch, and they had to reinvent the door handle so that a child can open the darned thing. Then there’s the question of how you’re going to furnish the

place. Once Heavin and Donaldson created their new language, it kind of ruled out Restoration Hardware or Design Within Reach. Or even Design Out of Reach. The Weinman/Heavins would have been better off going to George Lucas (a neighbor on Padaro Lane), but his design hourly is cost prohibitive. Instead, they enlisted their long-term interior designer Meg Joannides, who has designed a bunch of stores for Hugo Boss and done great work in every style of residential decor – maybe except for Star Wars’ cantina. They have tasked her with creating the objets that look like they belong. Did I mention that the Montecito Debris Flow happens somewhere in here? In any event, permits are finally received in early 2018, and ground is broken. Heavin and Weinman (or perhaps more accurately Heavin and Donaldson) are off to the races. One of the advantages of engaging the most professional people at the top of their field is the build goes smoothly and well. For a structure that looks dramatic, the build is eerily without drama.

Donaldson says, “The project was managed very well by the client’s management team, Stonemark, and MATT Construction. We had a lot of good management all around. This project easily could have been six or more years of construction but was built in the time range of any other Montecito custom home. I can name a couple of Montecito projects that started before us – and are a fifth of our size and complexity – and are still not complete. I’m proud of our team.” Heavin says that over the course of the build, the workers went from “what to why to whoa!” This is not to say the build was not without its own peculiarities. One day, there was a very large crane…being carried by an even larger crane, reminiscent of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. At one point, when COVID and supply chain woes were peaking simultaneously, there was some unique building material needed from China and I heard the phrase, “What do we do? Jeff Bezos has all the planes.” I don’t know how that one was solved; I only know that it was.

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PHOTO BY ROBIN DONALDSON

PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES

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hen Bruce wanted to build this house, at a certain point I got scared. Recently retired, after a big career with lots of stress and high exposure, I didn’t want anything that would draw attention to us and wanted to fly under the radar. As the house was being conceived, the designs kept getting more and more ambitious. I became quite upset in the beginning because I did not want to be part of a project this size, and I felt I couldn’t disappoint Bruce because it meant so much to him. I had to look inward and ask, What would make me as happy as Bruce is about building this house? My answer was a ceramics studio, which I asked if Bruce and Robin would program into the plans. “When I was young, ceramics had made a huge impression on me as something I loved and wanted to return to someday. To see if I still liked ceramics, I took a class at community college and it didn’t click. I threw a bowl on the wheel, and it was just a bowl. There was no magic, no spark, no real satisfaction in it. Then I read about a class being held in Colorado called Digitally Fabricated Molds for Ceramics, about how to program shapes in 3D software and use a computerized milling machine to make molds. Now that sounded interesting! I took the class and started learning Rhino and Grasshopper software. While there, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was using the same software to make ceramic molds that was being used to design our futuristic house! So suddenly, I stumbled on a newfound passion that inadvertently provided connective tissue between ceramics and our home. I can look around the house and know how the shapes were made. Terms like lofts, boolean operations, and blended surfaces applied to my ceramics and my house! That was unexpected, unintended, and seemed wonderfully serendipitous. It felt like fate brought me into this new multiverse of parametric design and 3D printing. Suddenly, my request for a ceramics studio meant a lot more to me than I had ever anticipated. And it helped me make peace with the project and to embrace it as my own, even though it’s mostly Bruce’s.”

COMING SOON

PHOEBE BRUNNER

“ I WAS DESIRING TO LOOK INTO THE IRRATIONAL AND EMOTIONAL ASPECTS IN DESIGN THROUGH ARCHITECTURE. THAT MEANT PLAYING WITH LIGHT, FORM, AIR, AND VOLUMES IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT COMMON BUT MOVING. OUR GOAL WAS TO ESCAPE THE EXPECTED THROUGH SERIOUS PLAY INTO SOMETHING NEW AND WONDERFUL.”

– BRUCE HEAVIN, OWNER 160

YOU SET THE BAR. WE’LL MANAGE THE LIGHT.

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here was a lot of pushing and pulling back and forth as we challenged each other and our perceptions,” says Heavin. “The directions I pushed upon Robin brought him out of his architectural comfort zone into an exciting new area of discovery that he and his team embraced. Robin also challenged me and talked me out of many ideas when I went too far. This friction and willingness to play and experiment brought out the best in all of us and, in turn, created something truly spectacular in the end. And in that sense, we made the best house we could possibly make.”

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PHOTO BY DEWEY NICKS

“ BRUCE AND LYNDA ARE ARTISTS WHO FOCUSED ON IDEAS NOT THINGS.”

– ROBIN DONALDSON, ARCHITECT

he job site is becoming a home. Pickup trucks are starting to be outnumbered by electric vehicles. The roof is growing in – just as Heavin and Donaldson had hoped and said it would. Indeed, the house is settling back into its surroundings like Wright’s Fallingwater did, like Neutra’s Montecito Tremaine House did, and like Montecito’s Crawford House, another Robin Donaldson project done while he worked for Morphosis. I ask Heavin if he has any thoughts on what the legacy of this house will be. Wisely, he says it’s too early to tell. But this much I know: There are already numerous benefits to the kind of construction successfully executed at Hill House, in some ways bringing museum-grade construction to a residence as never before. The lead at Gehry Technologies told me that because of the precision of their program, there is very little construction waste. So little, in fact, that it saves 18 percent on the total construction cost. That’s significant because 18 percent is the cost of your contractor or architect. And the lack of wastefulness is certainly music to Mother Earth. The same person at Gehry says that a lot of the tech in this house will make its way into ordinary homes 10 or 15 years from now. Will your next house be built to within 1/16 of an inch thanks to Hill House engineering? Perhaps. But just as learnings from Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao made Hill House possible, it’s too early to tell what learnings from Hill House will lead to. Maybe your next home will get 3D printed in a month. From a program Heavin and Weinman perfected and taught you. What we do know, concretely, is this: Heavin, Donaldson, and every one of the artisans and laborers involved have broken open the red terra-cotta roof of what you and I can build in Montecito. As well as the possibility of what a house can be on this planet. And maybe elsewhere. 164

HILL HOUSE METAL STUD FRAMING IN PROGRESS

Stonemark Construction Management is proud to have managed the Hill House project from design to completion.

TRUЅTЕD ОWNЕR’Ѕ RЕРRЕЅЕNTATІVЕ FОR CHALLENGING & UNIQUE РRОJЕСTЅ Соmmеrсіal / Uрѕсalе Rеѕіdеnсеѕ / Ѕaсrеd Ѕрaсеѕ / Multі-Famіly stonemarkcm.com

HILL HOUSE Montecito, CA

CONCEPT AND IDEATION: Bruce Heavin and Robin Donaldson, AIA

ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT TEAM: Partner in Charge: Robin Donaldson, Project Architect: Greg Griffin, Erin Lani-Sciotto, Rafael Lopez, Nicklaus Schwaller, Alex Towpasz Project Participants: Reed Donaldson, Anne Graham, Mitsuki Ikeda, Juan Carlos Ornelas, Jessica Hall, Sho Jeungeun, Sieglinde Pukke, Christine Reins, Ella Rocker, F. Myles Sciotto Photo by Bruce Heavin

HILL HOUSE PORTFOLIO

electing who would work on as high profile a job as the Hill House was a little like selecting which subcontractors would work on the Hoover Dam or the Mars Rover or any other massively ambitious project. In all cases, the work had to be top-notch and the vendors had to be professional, highly technologically savvy, and collaborative. Almost everyone had to be “conversant” in BIM 3D computer modeling. (BIM just stands for Building Information Modelling.) Nathan Jarvis, the project manager for the general contractor MATT Construction, explained that almost none of the subcontractors used the same BIM program, so part of MATT’s job was to translate every vendor’s “native tongue” into the common tongue of Gehry Technologies. Once MATT could verify that none of the subs were in conflict (done at weekly “clash meetings”), this information would then get translated back into each vendor’s native tongue. Oh, if only they had MATT Construction at the Tower of Babel! Jarvis said one of the challenges of selecting this dream team was that some reputable vendors were actually scared of the complexity and ambition of the project, while others literally did not have the computational power to process critical information files. Thus, the vendors who ultimately helped manifest Hill House really are a dream team.

MICHELLE MOORE, BIG ASS FANS AIR CIRCULATION

“B

ig Ass Fans was chosen for Hill House because they manufacture high-quality, silent, durable fans that have the proper scale and proportion for the project,” says architect Robin Donaldson. Not to mention i6’s industrial look that comes from a true industrial pedigree. In addition to their sleek style, Big Ass residential fans feature smart technology that can simulate breezes, selfadjust to the climate, turn off after a specified period of time, and connect to Google Home or Amazon Alexa devices. Big Ass fans bring form and function to any space and blend seamlessly with any design.

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RYANN HAZEL, CLASTIC DESIGNS CUSTOM CONCRETE FABRICATION

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e supplied the precast concrete elements of the project. Architect Robin Donaldson created a new language for this house, and we were privileged to help bring the vision to life. Our company is at the intersection of art and engineering, meaning if you can artfully design something and that thing also needs to be durable and provide a function, we always strive to figure out the systems to make it happen. “We pride ourselves on not saying no, even when we aren’t quite sure initially how we will accomplish the end result. We enjoy the

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challenge of complex designs and the processes involved when figuring out how we are going to achieve them. Concrete is one of mankind’s oldest building materials and in some ways seems like such a rudimentary material, but when used to its full potential, there are unlimited applications and possibilities. We are confident in our craft and that we can get just about anything done when it comes to precast concrete, so long as your idea doesn’t defy any laws of nature or physics. And even if it does, we’re willing to at least take a look. “We had to build very specific parametric molds in order to fabricate the Hill House bar. These aren’t something that could just be purchased. So that required a lot of reverse engineering. The way that our concrete is cast, our mold work has to be built upside down and backward. Once casted, you need to know how you’re going to get the product back out and into its original intended position. “It takes a lot of foresight and creativity to make these beautiful designs look simple and elegant and effortless.”

530-488-6658 | CLASTICDESIGNS.COM

GIDEON PERRY, FANTASTIC THEATERS, INC. HOME THEATER CONSTRUCTION

“A

lthough Hill House is by and large a concrete structure, there’s a misconception about concrete that the sound from the house won’t carry into the theater and vice versa. Actually, concrete is not your friend when it comes to sound, because structureborne energy doesn’t dissipate very easily, whereas airborne energy does. “The way the team responded in Hill House theater is basically the floors, walls, and the ceiling have been completely decoupled and isolated from the

structural concrete as well as from each other. So the floor moves independently on its own as a floating floor that rests on rubber pucks. The walls are decoupled again from each other and from the floor. And the ceiling is hanging from the theater shell from hundreds of springs. If you pressed against the ceiling, you could push it up an inch. “All these separate entities work as a system to contain all the energy in the theater. They turn the sound into heat, which dissipates in the walls, so you don’t get any noise transfer elsewhere in the house. As you might imagine, the final result is quantifiably better than any commercial theater – which we have verified through acoustical analysis. In fact, it blows them out of the water.”

818-877-9929 | FANTASTICTHEATERS.COM

NICK INMAN, HUNTER DOUGLAS ARCHITECTURAL CUSTOM WINDOW SHADES

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n Hill House, the motors and fabrics were the only two components off the shelf, everything else had to be engineered and fabricated. But that’s what we do at Hunter Douglas Architectural. In the architectural division, we can custom shade almost anything – major museums, you name it. “Planning was crucial on Hill House. Because of so many interrelated trades working at once, sequencing becomes critical. And when you do a really sleek installation like this, obviously you have to plan for that sleekness. This is not the kind of place where you can mount a wire around a door and staple it. “The fabric we used here is a marine-grade pretensioned polyester dipped in a PVC coating to keep it stable and durable for years to come. The owners were very concerned with energy efficiency and creating the optimal conditions for their art collection. “Our shade system is automated and tracks what the sun and wind are doing at all times. The shades are integrated into the home automation system. If it’s harsh sun, the system deploys. If it’s overcast, it adjusts. And if there’s high wind, it retracts the shades completely in order to protect itself. It’s definitely more reliable than a human. I’m not saying it’s smarter but maybe as smart.”

800-727-8953 | HDARCHITECTURAL.COM

DON QUINN, LIGHTBLOCKS

SPECIALIZED ACRYLIC PANELS, LIGHT TRANSMITTING SHELVES, TRANSLUCENT SHOWER ENCLOSURES

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ur bread and butter is everything. On the Hill House project, we did multiple translucent partition walls, shelves that are edge lit, some illuminated elements in the wine room, and the shower enclosures in the main bathroom. The experience of being in that house is one of seamlessness. Here’s how that seamlessness happens. “Our patented material is a matte-finish acrylic with a resin coating. It is more impact resistant than glass and half the weight. Because of a proprietary technology, we’re able to fuse multiple panels on site and coat them with resin to maintain the seamless experience and reach whatever height or span the client desires. “In the case of the shower enclosures at Hill House, the challenge was to create something that was, first and foremost, watertight. But the architect and interior designer wanted a product that would not interrupt the conveyance of light throughout the space, allow for privacy, as well as give an indication when someone was using the shower – without sacrificing modesty. “Within all those parameters, we are the perfect product. We also have the advantage that while our product resists chemicals, it is also easily cleaned with just soap and water. And, unlike glass, if our product gets scratched, the damage is easily buffed out and recoated. Unlike other acrylic products, ours maintains nearly 100 percent colorfastness over time. We’re in it for the long haul and are proud to have executed the architect and designer’s seamless vision.”

603-889-1115 | LIGHTBLOCKS.COM

BILL JANKA, MISSION AUDIO VIDEO

HOME THEATER AND SMART HOME SYSTEMS DESIGN, ENGINEERING, AND INSTALLATION

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or Bruce and Lynda, technology is a conduit to their art. They’re very involved in film – both as producers and as philanthropists – so it was important to us that their systems function at the apex of what is technologically feasible. We try to do the best work in California because we know if it’s the best in California, there’s a likelihood it will be the best in the world. “This particular project was like building a spaceship because we were never going to surface mount a wire – there was limited space in the conduits running through the concrete – so you kind of had one chance to lay out your system and get it right. There was no going back. “There were so many hands on deck, so many experts involved in the creation of this technology masterpiece, that a few times a week

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PORTFOLIO

– for two years – the general contractor held ‘clash meetings’ to make sure none of the subs stepped on each other’s toes and to catch any equipment conflicts. The result is one of the finest examples of a private screening room in Southern California.”

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MEG JOANNIDES, MLK STUDIO INTERIOR DESIGN

informed us that the client had an appreciation for the fabrication process we would be using on the hardware. 3D software allowed us to take a conical shape to remove material from the body of the lever at the point where it’s bent. This helped facilitate the bending process. The final product relates back to some of the shapes in the architecture that SDA had designed. “Having our facility in an industrial neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley reminds us of how important it is to design, engineer, and fabricate here locally in California. This allows us to have full control of the process and ensure the quality control is managed every step of the way. For us, staying current with the technologies that architects and designers use translates to the tools and methods we utilize to CNC machine and create 3D print prototypes that our clients can touch and feel. “We have been in business for 25 years and can adapt to the needs of any project, ranging from Spanish to modern. We can handsculpt ornate designs as well as model the design in 3D to achieve a machined and refined feel like what we’ve made for Hill House. We have also been involved in restoring hardware to maintain the character and historical value of a house. We understand that every client is unique and the process of creating something they gravitate toward is fluid.”

818-988-8730 | PASHUPATINA.COM

STEVE HANSON, STEVE HANSON LANDSCAPING LANDSCAPE INSTALLATION

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got the job because I’d worked with Bruce and Lynda before both in commercial spaces and on residences, and they knew I had the chops even if contemporary modern isn’t my natural, go-to style. I’m more frequently asked to do Spanish, Cape Cods, and traditional – all of which I love. But if a designer has a good sense of proportion and of propriety – what goes with what – that should carry the day. A good designer should be able to do any decor. “On this job, it was important to be collaborative because there were a lot of people involved, and in many cases, we were being asked to do things that seemed to push the limits of certain materials, the physics of what is possible, and sometimes the limits of the imagination. “The biggest challenge of the job was everything. For example, Bruce would find some chair that just won a student contest somewhere in Norway. And he’d say, ‘Can we source this? Can we build this? And have you spoken to the Norwegian furniture maker yet?’ That kind of thing kept me stimulated every single day since we started.”

310-652-5255 | MLKSTUDIO.COM

IVAN GOMEZ AND NATALIE MAGARIAN, PASHUPATINA

CUSTOM DOOR AND CABINET HARDWARE e’ve worked with ShubinDonaldson Architects (SDA) on a previous project and had some understanding of their high level of design. SDA shared their sketches and ideas with us and

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“I

t took us a week to get the soil up on the roof. It was blown in with pumps. We’ve done six projects for Bruce and Lynda over the past 10 years. This has been a very cool place to come to work every day, and we’re all going to miss it. There have been unusual aspects to this job, but I wouldn’t call them difficult. For example, there’s a cable system on the roof the gardeners must clip in to just to keep everyone safe and stable. That’s not something you see every day. But it’s well designed and works well. “Oddly, the things that make a job challenging weren’t really present here. What makes a job challenging is challenging people. But MATT Construction ran a really tight ship, and everyone just

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chipped away in their silo, except for those times a few silos needed to work together, and MATT was great at orchestrating that as well. The whole outfit up here was like the Golden State Warriors from a few years back. Everyone was tops at their position, no one got injured, and it was an honor just to be a part of that team. “One of the things I’ve loved about this project is how the house is embedded into the hill rather than on the hill. That part of the project is unusual. It helped preserve views up the canyon so viewers would see plants instead of a structure.”

805-563-3429 | STEVEHANSONLANDSCAPING.COM

DAVID GOLDENBERG, TRU ARCH WINDOWS

walls are from Sweden, while the insulating glass panels are from Spain – the only place in Europe with the oversize heat-treating ovens required to ‘bake’ these extraordinary glass expanses. The finest materials available from across the globe were brought together seamlessly in Southern California through the relentless determination, tireless commitment, and unparalleled expertise of the TRU Arch team. Each piece of the puzzle fit together precisely, exactly as planned within the 3D model. “This project was ambitious, but we’ve done ambitious projects before with some of the most ambitious clientele – from supplying products on the Apple campus in Cupertino to personal homes of tech legends, Hollywood royalty, and actual royalty. Sometimes what’s even more challenging than the fabrication or installation is the logistics – i.e., the delivery. Transporting enormous panels that are too large for traditional flatbed trailers – navigating bridges, tunnels, overpasses, and overhead cables – requires precise planning, flawless coordination, and meticulous execution, a science all its own. TRU Arch made it happen, and we believe the end result is an architectural masterpiece.”

310-202-0066 | TRUWINDOWS.COM

WALTER WOZNIAK, STONEMARK CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

“O

ur company lives at the intersection of art and engineering, and with the exception of the front door (done by others), we outfitted Hill House with the finest and most advanced glazing materials available. Our fenestration research and product development center in Hawthorne is located right next door to SpaceX, which I think is more appropriate than ironic. When the leading architectural geniuses imagine these ambitious structures, we help bring their extraordinary vision to life. Our company takes over where other window and door companies become overwhelmed and stop. “Many of the windows we installed are constructed with robust, multi-ply laminated glass followed by an eco-friendly thermal break to maximize energy efficiency and are completed by another pane of thick laminated glass. With all the parameters we need to consider – seismic, wind loads, deflection, LEED – most of the glass we installed would be considered bullet and blast resistant. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. “This project was the Metaverse come to life, and we were up for it. The structure was first previsualized electronically within an advanced engineering workstation, then physically manifested in Santa Barbara. And it was truly an international effort even though the end-users are in Montecito. I’m from Canada and we utilized state-of-the-art French 3D modeling software to simulate all the parabolic curvature and complex geometry. The automation mechanics that lift the glass

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“E

ven though it sounds obvious, a lot of people don’t know what construction managers do. When most people build a residence, the general contractor runs everything and manages the project internally, controlling most operational aspects. Construction managers work as the owner’s representative before, during, and after construction to keep the owner’s interests front and center. “The primary goal for any project is success and for the client to have fun getting there. We take on a lot of the worry, so the owners can enjoy the journey. We generate budgets, review and approve contracts, and control how money is dispersed from beginning to end, which means a lot of sourcing and a lot of vetting. Part of the art of a successful project like this is taking something incredibly complex and running it through a robust management process streamlining it to the point where it looks like it’s running itself. It’s the end result that matters of course: a satisfied client.”

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125CanonViewRd.com K R I S T I C U R T I S 805.886.6135

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Congratulations F R O M S OT H E B Y ’ S I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E A LT Y O N T H I S S I G N I F I C A N T, P R I VAT E S A L E

Legendary Montecito Estate | Offered at $18,000,000 | Represented the Buyer

VIVIENNE LEEBOSH 805.689.5613 | vleebosh@cox.net

CAROLINE SANTANDREA 805.452.0212 | csantandrea@cox.net

S OT H E B Y ’ S I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E A LT Y | M O N T EC I TO - 1 1 6 5 C OA ST V I L L AG E R OA D, S U I T E A | M O N T EC I TO, C A 9 3 1 0 8 © 2022 Sotheby’s International Realty. All Rights Reserved. Sotheby’s International Realty® is a registered trademark and used with permission. Each Sotheby’s International Realty office is independently owned and operated, except those operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. All offerings are subject to errors, omissions, changes including price or withdrawal without notice. Equal Housing Opportunity. Featured Agents: Caroline Santandrea DRE: 01349311, Vivienne Leebosh DRE: 01229350

FIDO2.O YOUR PERSONAL ROBOCOP HAS ARRIVED BYNICHOLAS.SCHOU

ou just sold your startup and bought a Montecito spread for $2 million over asking. The problem is, for tax purposes you’re in another state for 183 days of the year. How to secure your new property? Well as it happens, there’s almost an entire - and quite hubristic, to say the least - sci-fi subgenre involving a titillating nexus between law enforcement, futuristic security, robotics, and artificial intelligence. However, as the sheer existence of the K5 self-driving robot from Silicon Valley-based Knightscope suggests, this seemingly conceptual model is in fact very much real. As in, you can buy it now. The K5 is about as tall as an average person; it can move, it can record high-definition video at face level, and unlike other security cameras that aren’t actually monitored by a live human - it can perceive a threat, send an alert to a live human, and, based on feedback, methodically increase its security-risk skill set.

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

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K5 THE CRIME-FIGHTING AUTONOMOUS SECURITY ROBOT (COURTESY KNIGHTSCOPE)

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he concept is the brainchild of Stacy Stephens, a former Dallas-area police officer who partnered with Silicon Valley tech wizard/former Ford Motor Company exec William Santana Li. The two began informal chats about how to create a robot-based security system that can help prevent high death tolls from mass shootings - in part based on the length of time it takes for first responders to arrive on scene and neutralize the threat. “How you get officers into a school or anywhere else more quickly during an emergency is through active intelligence - eyes and ears,” Stephens says. “The robot we envisioned provides a way of sending out intelligence that we need quickly before anyone arrives. And it can be used at schools, corporate campuses, residences...anywhere you need security.” As a cop, Stephens says he became increasingly aware of how ineffective most home - and even corporate - security systems tend to be. “In a normal situation, you may have some type of CCTV or camera, but unfortunately, I can’t tell you the number of times I have rolled up on a scene where I wish I had usable evidence,” he says. “The robots allow us to have 360-degree HD eyes at eye level (versus the CCTV, which is always looking down at a head) plus audio as well as thermal video” - all of which can be used to build a profile of suspicious activity, and in the case of criminal activity, can create a pool of precise data that can be shared with law enforcement to aid investigations. Meanwhile, simply by roving your property on its own programmable route, the rather imposing-looking robot is doing half its job. “The K5 is already acting as a physical deterrent,” says Stephens, whose clients include residences in Beverly Hills. “Having something five-and-a-half-feet tall with full HD filming is hard to beat.”

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

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GREAT

NEXTSPECTATIONS Timothy Corrigan reminisces toThe Riv.

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Photo by Tim Street-Porter

imothy Corrigan is one of the most successful and impeccable interior designers in the world, so it’s no surprise he’s working here. What is surprising, however, is the nature of the project. Corrigan used to have a house here in the Hedgerow in Montecito that he sold in 1998. Chester Carjola designed the house in 1933 for one of J.P. Morgan’s kids. It had three bedrooms and six! maids’ rooms on 12! acres. Because that’s how you lived when you were the direct descendant of J.P. Morgan. Oh, and of Alexander Hamilton. Remember Hamilton was our first Secretary of the Treasury, so the family obviously knew their way around lucre. Carjola was a notable architect who designed the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and major parts of UCSB. Carjola also notably designed a gorgeous house on Pepper Lane recently divested by Drew Barrymore – her “wedding house” which was no longer, ahem, apt. Now, almost 25 years later, the brandnew owners of the Carjola Hedgerow manse reached out to Corrigan, asking him to renovate his old abode. I told Corrigan the story sounded oddly like the Bob Evans documentary in which the Hollywood mogul gets his old mansion back. Corrigan’s story may be even better though, and he was kind enough to share it. Corrigan has a long history with Montecito dating all the way back to his childhood. Fortunately for us, he was willing to share that too….

Photo by Andrea Savini

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

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Photo by Tim Street-Porter Photos by Edward Clynes

THE NEW OWNERS ARE DOING A TRULY FAITHFUL RESTORATION – FROM THE OLD INTERCOM TO THE ONCE-SECRET ROOM

“I

spent a lot of my childhood in Montecito. My grandparents first moved here in the 1970s, and I would come up on the weekends. My grandfather swam well into his 90s at the Coral Casino every day, miles at a time. I basically learned to swim at the Coral myself. In fact, I was on the swim club. “Eventually my grandparents got a place on East Valley, and I’d walk down San Ysidro to get to the beach, and that’s when I would always walk by this house, the Carjola house, and it looked like Great Expectations. It was always overgrown and looked like no one lived in it, but it turns out the J.P. Morgan granddaughter was living in it, still in the room she grew up in, never even moved into the main bedroom after her folks passed. There were long hallways with piles and piles of books. “It was a big empty house, almost like a haunted house, but it was beautiful architecture. For some reason, I always had this unwarranted emotional attachment to this place. I think it had something to do with the beauty of the architecture, the relative simplicity of the lines, but also great details and architectural nuance – paneled dens, hidden doors, secret rooms…. I always had a thing for places that didn’t give up all their secrets in one showing. “Then one day I got a call from my best friend, Mitch Morehart, who is a broker up here. Mitch said, ‘Oh that house that you’ve always loved is going to be coming on the market.’ And so I was like, ‘You’ve got to get me in before anyone else sees it.’ And I basically got in, made an offer because I just, it was like, it was a mess, but it didn’t matter because I had romanticized the place so much since childhood.

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2022. Compass is a licensed real estate broker (01991628) in the State of California and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdraw without notice.

Photos by Tim Street-Porter

Photo by Edward Clynes

“I

was so struck by the beauty and the quality of the construction. It had lots of problems, and additional potential problems because it had its own gasoline tanks so you could fill your own gas there. But I just was so in love with it, it was very hard for things to come up to deter me from buying it. I remember some friends came up from Los Angeles to see it. They thought I was crazy. Like, ‘Why are you buying this big, old, white elephant that hasn’t been touched in years?’ They didn’t even make it up to the second floor. They didn’t need to see the rest. It’s like they were so turned off by it, they thought it was dark and depressing. But I just knew that it had the potential to be this amazing place. “At the time I wasn’t even 40 years old. It was just one of those weird things I couldn’t justify or explain. I was just like, ‘I’m doing this.’ Everyone thought I was nuts. I also wasn’t even a designer when I first took on the project. I was in advertising. I was the president of Bates Worldwide (a division of Saatchi & Saatchi). I was running 6,000 employees in 197 offices in 89 countries. But I felt so far removed from creativity, I felt like I could have been running a paperclip company. So I had started doing design stuff – little jobs on the side – at night. Which is when I realized I really enjoyed design more than my day job.

Photos by Tim Street-Porter

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KELLEN MEYER Fiber Artist • Sculptor • Collaborator Kellen@KellenMeyer.com • www.KellenMeyer.com Studio Open By Appointment

1850 Jelinda Drive | Ennisbrook Listed off-market for $24,850,000

”

I have had several occasions to work with Calcagno & Hamilton Real Estate Partners as a listing agent on our home in Montecito, and on several other investment properties. They have impressed me, my wife and business partners in a variety of ways. They’ve fulfilled and exceeded all of our expectations. - John C.

TEAM in SB MLS*

Calcagno & Hamilton Real Estate Partners 805-565-4000 Info@HomesInSantaBarbara.com www.HomesInSantaBarbara.com 1255 Coast Village Road, Suite 102B

I N S P I R E | C R E AT E | I M PA C T

AB DESIGN STUDIO, INC. 420 E HALEY ST SANTA BARBARA, CA 93101 12421 VENICE BLVD STE 210 LOS ANGELES, CA 90066 805.963.2100 abdesignstudioinc.com

architecture | interior design | planning

Photo by Tim Street-Porter

Photos by Edward Clynes

“W

hen I left advertising, they really thought I was just having a midlife crisis. In fact, my boss didn’t think I was serious about leaving. My boss, the chairman, said, ‘He’s just going through a midlife crisis.’ My father had just died, and they didn’t fill my position for close to 10 months because they kept thinking, He’s going to finish grieving, wrap up his midlife crisis, and come back. In fact, Saatchi was so convinced this was just a midlife crisis they kept me on the payroll. But if this is a midlife crisis, several châteaux, 30 years, and two books later, I’d say it has been a pretty fruitful one. “On the Carjola house, I did a very successful and satisfying renovation from 1995 to 1996, then lived here most of the time except for some time at an apartment I kept in Paris. While I was here, I had a very wonderful time working in L.A., New York, and Seattle. But when my international work took off, I really needed closer proximity to an international hub, so I sold my Carjola. Mind you this was long before the airport here became what it is today – truly legit. “The people I sold to were here for a while – more than two decades. But they committed a few aesthetic crimes on the interior – which was, of course, their right – and a few more on the exterior. Fortunately, ultimately, they eventually sold to the current owners, a lovely new family, before Carjola’s masterpiece was completely desecrated inside. But this is where the story really takes a left turn. “When the new owners, Adrienne and Roger Bamford, were in escrow, they’d heard that I had lived here, so they tracked me down – I was in Paris at the time – and they called me trying to vet the house and said, ‘We’re thinking about buying this house.’ And they actually were expecting, hoping, that I’d say bad things about it because they were like, ‘Oh, this is a lot of work to buy this sucker. Do we really want to take this on?’ And I was like, ‘That’s a magical house. You have to buy it.’ I had no idea at the time that I would ever work on this house again.

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(Photo courtesy: Goop)

Quality Building and Remodeling

Joel@BysunBuilt.com | 805.836.0033 www.BysunBuilt.com

“T

Photo by Tim Street-Porter

Photo by Tim Street-Porter Photo by Edward Clynes

Photo by Tim Street-Porter

he interesting and great thing about the new owners is a lot of people buy a house, even if it’s an older house with a storied past, and they often want to erase its past and put a brand-new imprint on it. Like it was always theirs or almost always theirs. That’s what staging is all about. Making a place look like people could live there but not like they actually did. I guess you could say that’s the ‘art’ of staging. But this couple was different, they were not like that at all. They really wanted to do a faithful restoration of the house, even down to having new tiles created to match the original tiles from the 1930s. “They called me up basically just to get a reference for the house, and had already engaged an interior designer, but then I guess they decided I was a unique steward for this project. And in a sense, they were right. Some people may love this house as much as I do but no one will ever love it more. “A lot of people thought I wouldn’t want to work on this house, that I’d been there done that or that I’d be proprietary. But I’m excited because I know so much more about design – and even structure – now than I knew then. Also my credo, my strong belief as a designer, is I never ‘do’ a project, it’s always about what the clients want for the house. Of course I may have ideas, but at the end of the day, I never forget it’s their house, and it must be for their needs and the way they want to live in it. There are things I might do differently if the house were mine. But those things must wait for my next house I buy here in Montecito.”

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MONTE CARLO AND MONTEC TO There’s more in common than just seven letters BY NICHOLAS SCHOU

MONTE CARLO

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f Montecito were a full-blown municipality, which it staunchly refuses to be, our spiritual and aesthetic sister city would certainly be Monaco, the French and Italian Riviera-wedged sovereign state and pearl of the Côte d’Azur. The common DNA between our two rivieri is extensive and robust. Monaco has close proximity to Cannes, a town critical to the French film industry, while Montecito has proximity to that town of tinsel just 80 miles (and, depending on traffic, anywhere from 75 minutes to three hours) to the south.

MONÉGASQUE RIVIERA

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oth rivieras enjoy idyllic climates, situated between temperate coastline and rocky, semi-arid mountains blessed with stunning ocean views. Monaco even occasionally has surf – and very good surf at that. The two enclaves share boat culture, a mild worship of car culture, and each place has fine dining and a couple of royals scattered about. And of course we’re also talking about two towns possessing some of the finest collections of housing stock ever to exist. Both locales boast opulent Mediterranean villas that could put a Medici to shame, Montecito’s famed El Fureidîs to give but one example of a manse that just came to market. Or check out Monaco’s Villa la Vigie, the former home of designer Karl Lagerfeld, now available for a mere $305,000. Per month. Which is not to say these towns are architecturally uniform, austere, regimented, or even orthodox. Beyond the palaces and casino, Monaco also allows for bold contemporary designs such as Tom Dixon’s brutalist concrete masterpiece built into the hills above Monte Carlo and Jean-Pierre Lott’s fashion-forward Le Stella featuring a dazzling multiplicity of concrete ribboned balconies. Likewise, Montecito makes room for Barton Myers’s iconic fire-resistant personal Toro Canyon residence, not to mention quite possibly the most contemporary structure in existence (featured on the cover and in “Montecito’s Moonshot”). Importantly, Montecito and Monaco also share philosophies. Both places celebrate la dolce vita of course but at the same time share a deep concern for the environment. To those who have been given great abundance also comes great responsibility. Santa Barbara birthed the environmental movement in 1969 in response to (at the time) the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Prince Albert II has Monaco on track to go carbon neutral before most other nations, and, somehow, the Monaco Yacht Show already is. Not to mention Monaco has already hosted four electric Grand Prix races – the “ePrix.” In addition, Prince Albert’s titular foundation has taken a global leadership role, disbursing more than $100 million to 700 projects limiting the effects of climate change, promoting renewable energies, preserving biodiversity, and managing water resources. Which brings us to our next common thread. In both localities, philanthropy is a top priority and the one venue where one-upmanship isn’t frowned upon. Here again, Monaco is a tiny place that has embraced a leadership role. And nowhere is this better exemplified than with the many charitable works connected to America’s most famous export to Monaco – Princess Grace. Monaco’s version of Lotusland: the Jardin Exotique de Monaco (Photo by Bernard Touillon)

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“ The world of Grace de Monaco defines exquisite elegance and craftsmanship while at the same time recognizing that each purchase is ensuring a young artist can take another step toward their creative dreams.” –Brisa Carleton, CEO of Princess Grace Foundation-USA

Grace and Style

f any one name captures the Monégasque-American connection – as well as the high priority placed on philanthropy in Monaco – it is of course Princess Grace (née Kelly), an eternal It Girl, Oscar-winning Hollywood leading lady, and style icon turned European royal and philanthropist. Grace was a deeply charitable person in her lifetime, and when that life was cut short in 1982, the Princess Grace Foundation was immediately launched by her husband, Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, with the aid of Kelly’s close friends and cohorts Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Lynn Wyatt (the Houston mega socialite and philanthropist). The Princess Grace Foundation really is like a MacArthur “Genius Grant” but focused strictly on the performing arts, receiving its funding from a multiplicity of sources and optimizing its rights to Grace’s likeness, image, and name to help fund the awards. The foundation uses its revenue to invest in emerging artists it identifies as innovative and important – with no strings attached. And it has an almost prescient eye for talent. During its 40-year history, the Princess Grace Foundation has given stipends to more than 800 emerging artists in theater, dance, and film through career-advancing grants. The Princess Grace Foundation has also partnered with prestigious luxury brands such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Dior, Cartier, Montblanc, and more as part of its strategic goal to enlist luxury brands to celebrate and support the arts. One notable local recipient of a Princess Grace Award in 1985 was Rod Lathim, a fifth-generation Santa Barbaran known for his dedication to the city’s arts and stewardship of the Lobero Theatre, Center Stage Theater, the Marjorie Luke Theatre, Boxtales Theatre Company, and the Santa Barbara Performing Arts League. Princess Grace Foundation’s diverse roster of recent recipients reads like a who’swho of creativity and innovation in the performing arts, including rising talents such as Crazy Rich Asians director Jon

198

M. Chu, Guatemalan-American actor Oscar Isaac (Star Wars, X-Men, Spider-Man, Scenes from a Marriage), and Tony and Grammyaward winning performer Leslie Odom Jr.

(Hamilton). Another Princess Grace Award winner, Jon-Sesrie Goff, recently won Best Documentary for After Sherman at the 2022 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

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MAUREEN “MO” MARTINEZ 805.708.9773 | MoMartinezRealEstate.com Maureen.Martinez@sothebys.realty

MAUREEN MCDERMUT 805.570.5545 | MaureenMcDermut.com Maureen.McDermut@sothebys.realty

t makes sense that the first major retail product to come from the house of Grace de Monaco is a highly reviewed floral fragrance, because the princess also happened to be a highly regarded artist of pressed flowers. The Grace de Monaco fragrance Promenade Sur Le Rocher Parfum and Eau de Parfum (available through Neiman Marcus) was created by award-winning master perfumer Olivier Cresp (Firmenich), guided by the expertise of Veronique Gabai (Estée Lauder), while Jérôme FaillantDumas (Dior, YSL) designed the vessels and packaging. “The world of Grace de Monaco defines exquisite elegance and craftsmanship while at the same time recognizing that each purchase is ensuring a young artist can take another step toward their creative dreams,” says Brisa Carleton, CEO of Princess Grace Foundation-USA. “With 100 percent of the proceeds going back to the foundation’s

Princess Stéphanie and Prince Albert present the Princess Grace Foundation Award to Rod Lathim in 1985

“ Receiving the Grace Foundation Award had the single largest impact on my early career. It propelled me to keep going. It allowed me to cast Troy Kotsur in an original production in 1995, who just this year won an Oscar for Coda. So I feel like my Grace Award is still bearing fruit.”

montecito JOURNAL winter

| spring • 2015/16

–Rod Lathim charitable grants program, Grace de Monaco is a living tribute to modern Monaco’s culture of philanthropy and is setting the standard of luxury for good.” While wearing arguably the most luxurious perfume in the world has its own merits, knowing that all the profits from each purchase help support one of the world’s greatest supporters of the arts might just be equally rewarding. Might there be a Grace de Monaco future collaboration with an oculist or somewhere down the road Hermès for Princess Grace’s eponymous Kelly bag? Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: The Princess Grace name is synonymous with luxury, quality, and philanthropy. And, showing no signs of tarnish, the Princess Grace Foundation is going to be around for a while.

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MONTECITO TO MANHATTAN Rod Lathim graced our cover back in the day

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Model Citizen STORY BY LES FIRESTEIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY BLUE GABOR

f the Central Coast were to have a single muse, the avant-garde felt artist/accomplished surfer/oftentimes model Taiana Giefer would certainly make the short list of candidates. Growing up in Santa Barbara in a series of architecturally significant homes, Giefer soaked up more than a little inspiration by osmosis. One abode she lived in was designed by the renowned Santa Barbara modernist Paul Tuttle, another by cutting-edge Santa Barbara architects Pam and Brett Ettinger, and yet another home – the famous Flying Carpet by Giefer’s polymath father Sebastian. Growing up in this sandbox, Giefer almost had no choice but to be creative.

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PHOTO BY MORGAN MAASSEN

aiana’s life partner, Leo Basica, is also an artist by profession as well as a local surf legend who also occasionally models. Does this sound like your life? It doesn’t sound like mine either. Together Giefer and Basica look like Mr. and Mrs. Effortless as they stroll their Toro Canyon mountaintop atelier checking on Giefer’s felt masterpieces-in-progress.

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iefer’s teased scarves and wraps appear modern but also primitive – crafted and haphazard at the same time. Perhaps that’s why her couture has appeared in major fashion magazines, The Hunger Games movie, not to mention the fashion holy grail: a Rihanna video. Something about Giefer’s works is deeply connected to the Earth and to the sea. Felting, as you might imagine, is both ancient – it is the oldest human-made fabric on earth – and an uncommon medium for an artist. Giefer discovered felting on a family trip to Germany, yes, the land of the ubiquitous Tyrolean felt hat. At age 17, she was captured by the alchemy of transforming Merino wool into felt garments by hand, was tantalized by the smells of the living hair, transported by the ancient tradition, and enraptured by the focus and effort it all took. Felting was a meditation, and from an early age Giefer was, quite literally, hooked.

n a world obsessed with farm-to-table, Giefer was an early adopter of flock-to-neck. The young artisan started by fabricating scarves and had early success in collaborations with Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, and Rick Owens, among others. In the process, Giefer has taken felt fabrication lightyears past the Oktoberfest chapeau. She has taken traditional felting, twisted it and shredded it, celebrating its imperfections and turning it into her own unique artistic medium. Her bespoke creations retail at top houses such as Maxfield/L.A., her work is a regular in important private art collections, and Giefer has been lauded by other designers, including Kendall Conrad and Mara Hoffman. Giefer has recently expanded her oeuvre to include epic tapestry-style wall hangings and is about to commence entire felt murals. As her canvas gets larger, no doubt Giefer’s reputation will likewise grow along with it. We have no doubt Giefer is America’s Claudy Jongstra (a globally acclaimed Dutch felter) but with the addition of organic, Santa Barbara flair. But what makes Giefer most Santa Barbara is not her surfing, not her off-the-beaten-track choice of expression, or even that everything about her enterprise is organic – it’s her local activism.

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. . . In a world obsessed with farm-to-table, Giefer was an early adopter of flockto- neck. The young artisan started by fabricating scarves and had early success in collaborations with Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, and Rick Owens, among others . . .

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iefer was one of the founders of the Recovery Shop, which gave out free clothing following Montecito’s 2018 debris flow, and she is an integral player at the Organic Soup Kitchen, a local charity that gives out one million bowls of soup a year to those in need. (Organic Soup Kitchen was profiled in our sister publication The Giving List Santa Barbara, www.thegivinglist.com.) This wildly talented artist is simply a model citizen.

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Gianni Vallino deconstructs the lamp

STORY BY JEFF WING PORTRAITS BY EDWARD CLYNES

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THE ASTROLABIUS LAMP IS MADE OF MIXED INDUSTRIAL COMPONENTS, CERAMIC INSULATOR, AND ROCKET ENGINE SPRING CASING AS THE BASE (PHOTOS BY DAVID ROSS)

he man on my screen is wearing a gray knit skullcap and round spectacles with transparent acetate frames. His own laptop captures him from below – and at that slightly jarring angle Hitchcock would use to amplify the torment of his panicked protagonist. But Gianni Vallino’s room is filled with Central Coast sunlight today – his sudden unheralded smiles adding lumens at intervals. Tastefully unshaven, searchingly deliberate when he speaks, Vallino is possessed of that indeterminate bohemian handsomeness one sees in the unlikely leading men of European art house movies. “I warn you I have an accent,” he’d texted me several days before. Now he haltingly describes a patch of desert littered with machines, his Italian locution so rich it seems to gently bend the air like a heat haze. “There is this company in the San Fernando Valley,” he says. “They manufacture the engine for the rockets that deliver satellites to their space orbit.” Vallino makes lamps, to wildly understate it. Represented by Los Angeles’s estimable Blackman Cruz (an enthusiastic early adopter, www. blackmancruz.com), Vallino’s light-throwing art objects are snapped up by collectors, A-list celebrities, interior design cognoscenti, and stunned, liquid passersby. What’s the big deal? These are “lamps” like Charles and Ray Eames’s fabrications were “chairs.” The work combines industrial design, Fritz Lang whimsy, and iconological deep-think to produce fixtures of embraceable profundity. That is, they’re very, very cool. And literally singular. Neither will you find the raw materials in an arts and crafts superstore. “I go to the Mojave Desert where they dismantle jet fighters,” Vallino says. “When you go, you have to bring your own tools. And you take everything that you can walk away with.”

The Object as Subject

allino is a celebrated provocateur d’incandescence whose lamps radiate gilded postindustrial irony. Sort of. Comprised of aerospace dross and other wild-looking machine-age curiosa, Vallino’s work splits technology open like a titanium pomegranate, revealing the previously hidden, crazy-beautiful inner gizmos that gives the launched rocket its decorous gyroscopic grace, or the oil rig’s maddened drill bit its purchase on the ocean floor. Composed of such stuff, the finished lamps possess an indescribable gravitas – part steampunk, part MOMA – not least because their elements are present-tense artifacts torn from the bowels of a future that would have made Jules Verne spit his coffee. “I always try to make a point that I want for people to know the provenance of the materials,” Vallino says. “I am a fabricator. I’m an assembler, you know, of discarded

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THE CONSTANTIN LAMP INCORPORATES A MERCHANT MARINE BRASS BASE AS WELL AS INDUSTRIAL COMPONENTS AND GEAR (PHOTOS BY DAVID ROSS)

objects. But I am not… I don’t consider myself an artist. I’m a creative person who has certain ideas about, like – what is the place of this work?” The gentleman’s question is rhetorical, but if I may – Vallino’s lamps occupy a space somewhere between the early 20th-century Dadaists, the post-structuralist musings of Jean Baudrillard, and Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner. The pieces vibrate with an irrational post-now joy, buffed to a deeply European intellectual finish. But don’t take my word for it. Vallino’s manifesto, which you can find alongside photos of his work on his website, is a Who’s Who of cultural revolutionaries and philosophers – folks like Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Georges Bataille, and Jacques Derrida – who, in the wake of an imaginationbeggaring World War I, turned their stunned attentions to parsing the absurd minutiae of human existence. An examination of The Object got a lot of play in that group. As Vallino writes of his creations: “…excluded objects reclaim their life beyond economic death.” Where does a guy get these ideas?

The Liberation of Everyday Life

orn and raised in the smallish Italian burg of Alba, Vallino grew up in a household whose traditionalist, parfait-like layout rang with floorto-floor conversation. “I come from a middle-class Italian family with a lot of books in the house, and the old Italian family ways – the grandparents at the ground floor, the kids’ room at the very top of the house, you know….” He laughs warmly. “Generations transfer all kinds of practical knowledge and family tales.” In 1957, the Situationist International – a philosophically dense group of political, economic, and social theorists that figures prominently in Vallino’s online manifesto – held its First World Congress of Free Artists in Alba. This was a big deal. Vallino was in a preincarnate state at the time (unborn, that is), but growing up, he came to understand the importance of the group and its ’57 Alba confab. (Situationist theory sees “the situation” as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, and so does play an oblique role in Vallino’s beautifully jarring design aesthetic.) While at Università in Torino, he immersed himself in political science and philosophy. “There was always this urge to understand the possibilities that are offered to everyone in the world.” He pauses, squints into the middle distance, and continues, “and then you have to decide what you want to do with your life; with yourself, you know? It was an open quest.”

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THE JACQUES LE FATALISTE STANDING LAMPS UTILIZE INDUSTRIAL AERONAUTICAL COMPONENTS AND HIGH HEAT-RESISTANT RUBBER (PHOTOS BY DAVID ROSS)

Alba. Santa Barbara. The Night Train to Prague.

nce in a lifetime there may come an opportunity to change one’s destiny. You’ll know it when the heavens open and a deafening angelic chorus starts hollering from on high in 10-part Heaven-Harmony®. Or you may just bump into a stranger on the choo-choo. “At a certain point I was on a trip to Prague by way of Vienna,” says Vallino, “and on the night train from Venice to Vienna I met these two Americans.” Around that time, many from around Europe were moving to Prague, whose growing reputation as a new capital of art, thinking, and starlit café chatter had begun to mirror that of expat Paris in the 1920s. Vallino visited the city with some regularity himself. It was on the Venice-Vienna leg one evening that he met the American couple on the train. The Fates dropped what they were doing and leaned in. “It’s a long way on the train at night. We shared my bottle of Martini and a lot of conversation,” he says. “Sara was an interior designer, and her friend Paul was a traveling companion. It was the beginning of a great friendship.” The new American pals would frequently visit Vallino in Alba, or they would all meet in Prague. Conversations deepened and Vallino shared his work with the couple – he’d begun fashioning lamps from strange manufacturing cast-offs. “I was already talking to Sara about recycling and this thinking of the Situationist International – turning an object into something it was not meant to be used for. Creating an aura in the work that approached an art form, even if it was a functional object.” One day Sara took Vallino aside. “Look,” she said. “Your work has real value. You can wait 20 years for it to catch on in Europe, or you can take a chance and come to California, where I’m sure you will find people that understand you.” Vallino narrows his eyes. “I stewed on this for quite some time.”

Lamplit Alchemy

he rest is… how does that saying go? “California is the fifth largest world economy,” Vallino exults with the ardor of a self-styled industrial archeologist. “It gives you the possibility to go through an enormous amount of components – from medical equipment to aerospace.” The man’s enthusiasms, like his lamps, are not quite of this world. Vallino’s magic is to transfigure consumerism’s spent fuel – so to speak – into fine art. It’s all in the manifesto. Vallino made the leap to the United States in 1993, falling immediately into the arms of – you name it. After brief stints in San Francisco

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“ I go to the Mojave Desert where they dismantle jet fighters. When you go, you have to bring your own tools. And you take everything that you can walk away with.” THE BAU WITH NO HAUS LAMPS ARE CONSTRUCTED WITH ALUMINUM CARGO STRAPS, TENSORS, AND BRASS BEARINGS AND FITTINGS. THE INTERSTITIAL STANDING LAMP HAS BRASS AIRPLANE ENGINE RINGS, BLACK RIBBED VULCANIZED NATURAL RUBBER, AND A HYDRAULIC WATER PUMP COMPONENT. (PHOTOS BY DAVID ROSS)

and Santa Cruz, Vallino found himself in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he helped his friend Sara’s step-grandmother – a woman named Cheri Raber-Peake – organize and archive her late husband’s paintings; canvases stored in containers in the back of the house. “This painter’s name was Channing Peake,” he says. “You’ve heard of him?” In time, Vallino landed in Santa Barbara, traveling up and down the coast for years, forging relationships with profligate industrial concerns and their mountains of fantastically machined refuse. Along the way he found his home, and his heart. “Elizabeth, my love of 25 years, is my biggest fan and critic. She is my muse.” Elizabeth Vallino Interiors – by way of NYC, Rome, Milan, Como, Biella, and the Istituto Pantheon – has been infusing new world spaces with embraceable Old World elegance since 1999. When Vallino began making the rounds, introducing his unique functional art to galleries and showrooms, one in particular was immediately struck by his vision and avidly brought him in. “Blackman Cruz helped me to be where I am. David Cruz understood my work and welcomed me into their roster of represented artists. He, Adam Blackman, and Lika Moore are the creative directors of the gallery. To this day they are helping me to evolve and continue with my trajectory.” This is the story of a man – yes, an artist – who took a 6,061-mile leap of faith to a place he’d never been. What on Earth was he thinking? “I was in my late 20s,” Vallino offers with a rueful smile. “You’re not ready yet to give up on your dreams.” 216

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radicate or recycle? Santa Barbara launched the environmental movement but also the first offshore drilling in the United States. Now, the oil rigs are winding down off our coast. What to do? There are 23 oil drilling platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara that are just now beginning a years-long process of capping and decommissioning. If you’re new to the area, they’re a weird sight poised just five miles off our otherwise pristine coast, but some of us have grown used to them and even see them as friendly beacons punctuating the marine layer and nighttime abyss. The platforms are historically important because, as Santa Barbarans know, protests against a massive oil leak in 1969 gave birth to the global environmental movement, the very first Earth Day, and precipitated President Nixon setting up the Environmental Protection Agency. Recycling and reuse are in Santa Barbara’s DNA, and the carbon footprint of removing all those miles of scrap metal would be devastating in its own right. Is eradicating the platforms really the best option?

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ne complication to eliminating the platforms is they’ve become habitat to thousands of species. Another complication is that Venoco, the company that owned and operated some platforms, has long since slid into bankruptcy, so the bill to eliminate the platforms could run our state literally in the billion$. Couldn’t those billions of California tax dollars go toward better causes? Say, perhaps, Santa Barbara’s burgeoning homeless challenges? Meanwhile, Santa Barbara County has been dealing with decreased cannabis revenue due to overproduction, which may have something to do with wildcat cannabis farming that broke out five quarter centuries after the area was besieged with wildcat petroleum production. Do we never learn? Annoyed locals without the benefit of a contact high are not thrilled with the 24/7 smell of skunkweed. We at The Riv imagine a two birds/one stone solution wherein vertical aeroponic cannabis farming operations move offshore. There is already housing and fresh water at all the platforms slated for decommission. That’s not just a win-win repurpose. That’s what we call a higher purpose.

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n ri

Visualizing what a potential repurpose of the oil platforms could look like with vertical aeroponic structures atop the existing infrastructure

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ALEX RASMUSSEN HAS ELEVATED A LOWLY METAL TO HIGH ART

ALUMINATI NEAL FEAY

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STORY BY JEFF WING

PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD CLYNES

LEX RASMUSSEN – once and future conqueror of the anodized design world – would be an object of bitter envy if he weren’t such a nice guy. Deeply tanned and photogenic in a tactically white dress shirt, Alex is eloquent, charming, witty, and self-assured. As we walk along an ordinary sidewalk, fragrant city breezes lift his perfectly coiffed forelock to reveal a fashionable Bride of Frankenstein stripe. The guy is even graying by design. “Commodity traders’ nickname for aluminum is congealed electricity,” he says avidly; the first of many pronouncements that mildly boggle. “Aluminum is hugely, hugely power intensive. If you’re going to make aluminum, you make it next to a power plant. Aluminum is made of dirt and power.” The last bit may sound like an adage, but Alex is indeed giving aluminum a swinging and powerful new high-art mien, and he knows his nonferrous stuff. He is third-generation boss of a company that wrangled the post-World War II surfeit of aluminum to turn the wartime commodity into a catalog of peacetime metal curiosa. “This company was built on cuff bracelets,” Alex summarizes. He joined the family business – a demure little steamroller called Neal Feay – as a young man in the late 1980s. At the time, he’d been torn between the family’s factory and his dream of becoming a fine artist; that is, the Neal Feay shop or sleeping on the beach. These days, his choice of commerce over art is yielding its own late-breaking irony. It was in 1945 that Alex’s grandfather Nils got the whole thing started. A second-gen American and Scandinavian émigré, Nils would demonstrate the zigzagging, picaresque pluck of the early American century, by the age of 14 lighting out from the family homestead in Montrose, South Dakota, for the open road. By the 1940s, he’d landed in Los Angeles building warplanes for Douglas Aircraft and raising his own family. When the conflict ended, Nils saw in the mad excess of post-war aluminum something he might build a business around. As the idea took shape, Nils Faye Rasmussen sought a popping company name and location to give the start-up a fair shot at getting out of the gate. So Nils became Neal, Faye (his mother’s maiden name) became Feay, and the multi-syllabic Rasmussen was elided altogether from the company’s public nomenclature.

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ILS moved his family up to Santa Barbara and planted the new enterprise there in ’45, seeing in the nascent global destination a cachet whose reflected glow would burnish Neal Feay’s undefined iconoclasm. Grandpa Nils built the sprawling 50,000-square-foot Goleta plant still in use today near the Santa Barbara Airport, later pioneering an aluminum colorizing process he called Anofax. Alex’s father took the company further, carefully innovating process and marketing along the way, making Neal Feay a name to be reckoned with in the niche aluminum manufacturing space. The company was widely respected and reliably profitable. “When I arrived in ’87 we weren’t doing a lot of sexy – anything,” Alex says. “We were doing chassis, but we weren’t doing Hi-Fi.” It was on Alex’s restless watch Neal Feay became a renowned go-to for high-end audio makers in search of stylish skins for their components. “It’s super important what something looks like,” he says. “We are selling a luxury good. If someone is spending $5,000 on a preamplifier and all it does is adjust volume and select an input, it better look like $5,000.”

NEAL CHARLES RASMUSSEN IN THE 1970S

A NILS F. RASMUSSEN IN 1946 RECEPTION DESK AT EDWARD CELLA ART + ARCHITECTURE, DESIGNED BY RASMUSSEN

LEX brought to the decades-old family endeavor a young man’s hungry ingenuity – all the while quietly feeding his fanboy enthusiasm for that rarefied intersection of art and design he saw in the gorgeously photographed coffee table literature he couldn’t stop collecting and poring over. Slowly, he made hesitant forays into his own Neal Feay design work and the grapevine began to hum. “I got pulled into the limelight in a very, very small, very nerdy part of the world,” he says. “But I was doing that on an island up in Santa Barbara. I had nobody to talk to about it. I was completely self-taught and just bought books and books and books – and studied. I taught myself design.” The so-called Great Recession in 2008 turned a daydream into a rescue operation. When the uncollateralized hammer fell, the global lucre-soufflé collapsed without ceremony and the disposable income crowd retracted in kind. With Neal Feay’s customer base hunkering down, hard truths emerged. “Nobody really needs a $15,000 amplifier,” Alex says quite reasonably, though he wasn’t as sanguine in the moment. The company nearly imploded. ALEX SIGNING A BASE FOR A LIMITEDEDITION STOOL SOLD AT DESIGN MIAMI BY EDWARD CELLA ART + ARCHITECTURE

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CARMELO LUEVANOS, HEAD OF ANODIZING, DYEING A SCALE MODEL OF AN ARTWORK

T was then that Alex – the frustrated artist who had long ago chosen the business path over the food-free vagaries of oil painting – withdrew into the chrysalis from which would emerge Neal Feay; champagne-splashed, aluminized pal of yacht manufacturers, stratospheric designers, template-cracking architects, and the mayor of London. Neal Feay has a global swagger these days but wears it lightly. Alex is using the blank, infinitely transmutable canvas of aluminum to forge an entirely new and unexpected design aesthetic whose RASMUSSEN WITH PROGRAMMERS ARTURO CAMPEAN AND JULIO LUNA DISCUSSING IMPROVEMENTS TO A SOFA LEG FOR HOLLY HUNT

frontiers have yet to be defined. His artisanal alchemy marries 21stcentury manufacturing to craft as he pushes the factory’s former robots to do things to aluminum that would’ve made Nils swoon. Neal Feay’s unique one-stop design and manufacture model melds computerized form-cutting, manual craft, and a nuanced, proprietary anodizing color process to produce surfaces and shapes – objects – of uncommon, even unearthly beauty. The design world is throwing open its doors. Turns out the secret handshake is talent. CAMPEAN AND PROGRAMMER OMAR RAMIREZ 224

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RASMUSSEN BROUGHT TO THE DECADES-OLD FAMILY ENDEAVOR A YOUNG MAN’S HUNGRY INGENUITY – ALL THE WHILE QUIETLY FEEDING HIS FANBOY ENTHUSIASM FOR THAT RAREFIED INTERSECTION OF ART AND DESIGN HE SAW IN THE GORGEOUSLY PHOTOGRAPHED COFFEE TABLE LITERATURE HE COULDN’T STOP COLLECTING AND PORING OVER.

BACKSIDE VIEW OF THE WAVE DESIGNED BY ALEX RASMUSSEN AND FABRICATED BY NEAL FEAY, EXPOSING THE LASER-CUT STAINLESS STEEL FASTENERS AND CONSTRUCTION METHOD

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BRAD BABINEAUX AT THE "10 DESIGNERS IN THE WEST WING" LANDMARK EVENT FOR THE LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL IN 2015. HE IS CLEANING THE WAVE.

RASMUSSEN NEXT TO RECENT MODELS FOR LOFTED ARCHITECTURAL SAMPLES – THE EVOLUTION OF THE WAVE SAMPLES OF BLUE COLORS AND TEXTURES, INCLUDING EXPERIMENTS BY ARTIST JOHN MILLEI FOR A FUTURE LARGE-SCALE WORK

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HAT Nils Faye Rasmussen began as a brilliant post-war business venture – aluminum cuff bracelets, cigarette cases, and other rarities for the tchotchke-obsessed Eisenhower epoch – is today’s Neal Feay; a hotly understated design house consorting with the likes of Holly Hunt, Louis Vuitton, Jony Ive, Hermès, Marc Newson, and…um…Bentley Motors – an automotive outfit of some repute, we’re told. Alex has a seat at the table he once regarded from afar – and today there’s a good chance he even made the table. In the Neal Feay ecosystem, aluminum is a chimera whose fluid, textural shape-shifting both disrupts and beguiles – and is endless. “It could be jewelry, it could be furniture, architecture, fine art,” Alex says. “But it all starts as a plate. It’s carved away into what it becomes.” Regarding the Pietà, Michelangelo once murmured, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Just sayin’.

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FROM TECH STYLE TO TEXTILE STORY BY LESLIE WATERMAN

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lmost every superhero wears a costume. For the few that don’t, it’s because they’re otherwise easily identified – like the Hulk (radioactive green), Ghost Rider (motorcycle and flaming skull), or the Human Torch, who needs very little introduction. For those superheroes who do need costumes, the motivation to wear one seems threefold: (1) It helps them get into character. (2) It protects their identities. And (3) It helps the world immediately identify who they are, otherwise known as branding. When Santa Barbara-bred Ryan Shand was navigating the corporate world, she found that her “costumes” could be transformative – not just in terms of how costuming made her feel, but she also found that “costuming” as opposed to just “dressing” could be incredibly useful to instantly let the world know who you are, your values, and how you want to be perceived. “I wanted to utilize clothing as a vehicle to share my voice, stand out in my role, and be a true female leader,” says Shand. “Clothing was the transportation method to find my confidence, and I wanted to help others find it too in a really unique way. “This was especially true from my early days working in tech startups. Living in Chicago, I was working as the general manager for a music tech company and mostly meeting with men. I thought, What am I trying to express through my vibe and presence without even having to say anything? And this is where my staple pieces of blazers, trousers, suiting, hats, and boots really came into play and why I launched my fashion line with the pieces I did.”

PHOTO BY ARNA BEHAR, @STUDIOARNA

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SEAMSTRESS, PATRICIA “PATTY” MOO, OWNER OF PERFECT FIT IN MONTECITO, ALTERS THE SHAND VAULT PIECES PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES

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“ For my first collection, I named every piece after a woman who inspired me,” says Shand. “ This Nina blazer was designed after interior designer Nina Freudenberger. The trousers are part of the vault collection, altered and recreated into something new with details by the ankles.” PHOTO BY ARNA BEHAR @STUDIOARNA MODEL STELLA PETERS

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his 30-year-old avid surfer – who is also the daughter of a pair of creatives (her mom, Susan, is a noted interior designer, and her dad, Bobby, is a luminary in advertising) continues, “When I started SHAND, it was fundamental that I stay intentional in building something that allowed my own personality and passions to shine through. I’ve always believed clothing has the power to inform the story we are trying to tell. It can act as a superpower – your Superman (or Superwoman) cape – and empower. I truly believe that what I put on in the morning must be an expression of who I am and what I am trying to voice. One’s appearance is an opportunity to convey a message, and I never wanted to squander that opportunity.” Santa Barbara values are woven into the very fabric of Shand’s clothing line. That is to say, Shand has built her brand around a message of empowerment while simultaneously meeting the requirements of where we are in our world today – prioritizing sustainability, limiting production, reducing waste, enhancing uniqueness, and getting creative with what we have already and what we have already harvested. Says Shand, “Every garment I make has been designed with an Earth-loving ethos. I try to use deadstock or recycled fabrics and materials, but I also work with sustainable fabrics produced locally in small batches. Through this process, I offer limited-edition pieces that allow you to stand out in your own way, knowing you are purchasing a piece that can never be mass produced. I also have a line of curated vintage garments that I call the SHAND Vault. These pieces are either upcycled garments altered into oneof-a-kind pieces that are truly irreplaceable as well as curated pieces I style and resell to pull different elements into my brand. My hope through this line is that I can go beyond the items and support the climate and the women who wear them.”

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COVID’S SILVER LINING:

REFLECTIONS ON LIFE ON THE ROAD STORY BY J

EFF WING

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THE HIFALUTIN, CENTRAL COAST HEIRS OF KEROUAC

ate Stover is sitting in front of a desktop computer, flipping through image after image of Airstream trailers in various stages of vivisection. His pleasantly pedantic tone is that of a thoracic surgeon dumbing down an X-ray. “As you can see, we have the shell set off down here to the side. So here’s the chassis. We were refurbishing it with a lift kit, and you can see some of the process here. Oh, and we did these skylight sections nobody else did.” He pauses to stare at his onscreen handiwork. “Beautiful, right?”

PHOTO COURTESY INNOVATIVE SPACES

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PHOTOS COURTESY INNOVATIVE SPACES

NATE STOVER (PHOTO BY KEVIN SCANLON)

e’re in a little office on the periphery of a “yard,” as they call these asphalt expanses devoted to one or another kind of vehicular rehabilitation. Stover’s Airstream reanimation business – Innovative Spaces – is an orderly landscape of curved aluminum, metalloid ribs, and scattered boutique accoutrements awaiting installation. “I went back to school in my 30s,” Stover offers at one point. “I was a marine geochemist for a while. Then I got into trailers.” There you go. Trailers? Something is afoot. Wheels are afoot – though there is likely a more competent way to express that. The “open highway” hasn’t beckoned like this since Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda sloppily stole the Road Movie out from under Hope and Crosby, and that was way back in ’69. What’s happening? Just this: People are dissing their Establishment houses – those imprisoning boxes fastened to the soil via concrete foundation – and taking to the road in vans, trailers, brutally customized compact cars. It’s a movement, a revolution, and a superdense summary hashtag. #vanlife – a term nonchalantly coined by a corporate escapee/backroads Pied Piper named Foster Huntington in 2011 – is a hashtag that contains worlds. Huntington had no clue his term – a self-mocking WASP appropriation of Tupac’s “thuglife” – would cause such a stir, let alone start a movement. At this writing, there are 12,108,635 Instagram entries pinned with the #vanlife tag. And where Instagram goeth, so has the nation long since goneth. Bob Wheeler is CEO of Airstream, Inc., and a brazen, smirking presence all over the internet. And why not? Since the world was sideswiped by plague, Mr. Wheeler’s baby has been growing like a sonofagun. Wheeler even had the temerity to coin the phrase “emerging pandemic lifestyle.” Sheesh. But it’s a fact – RV sales are creating millionaires, where they used to simply serve as dowdy bellwethers of the economy. When times were good, people bought outlandish family buses with matching curtains and dish towels.

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When times were bad – not so much. But when COVID showed up with fibrils a-waving, costing millions their jobs and ringing in a dramatic decline in U.S. economic output – RV sales went off like a Roman candle. Americans have long enjoyed getting out of the city for a Sunday drive. Nothing trebles that enthusiasm like a global plague that punishes urban crowds. “We had a little bit of a slowdown during the beginning of COVID,” Stover confirms of the early, brake-tapping days of the pandemic. “A lot of projects just disappeared.” Then a funny thing happened. “Our phones started ringing off the hook. COVID inspired people who hadn’t even thought of the road before.” That is, your eccentric, soft-spoken uncle Carl’s riveted aluminum heap on wheels – slumping and sunbeaten in the driveway for a week every August – is now the swinging exit strategy du jour, rocketing past city limits one step ahead of contagion. “We do a lot of stuff that nobody else does in the industry,” Stover says as he shows me around the yard. I’ll call his custom rides

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PHOTOS COURTESY INNOVATIVE SPACES

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Survivalist Plus. “The side of this trailer folds out to a deck. Push a button and it comes down.” He pushes the button. Servo-motors purr and there is a massive unfolding of anodized origami. “We’ll even help source the trailer,” he adds helpfully. His high-end retrofits often begin with a thorough deconstruction, reinventing from the axles up at the behest of customers who want the elegiac old-world aluminum curio married to 21st-century appurtenances. Stover’s clients ask a lot of him, and he obliges every billable whimsy not circumscribed by engineering or physics. It’s not easy. “You’re putting everything into a trailer,” Stover says. He lets that sink in. “It’s a house, but more complicated.”

PHOTO BY KEVIN SCANLON

You’re headed to Los Angeles on the 101, preening blue Pacific on your right, disappointing scrub-dappled foothills to your immediate left. Twenty-one miles south of Santa Barbara you fly past exit 78, and down there near the water – on the storied but momentarily subordinate Highway 1 – you see what looks like an apocalyptic oceanfront traffic jam; a mile-long line of RVs facing the same direction, hunched and elephantine, bristling with flags – metal crusaders descending on some Holy City or other.

hey call it Rincon Parkway. If you can pay the fee and parallel park your outlandish boxcar, you’ll have a temporary home on the beach, the famous Pacific flirting coquettishly with discount sand right in front of your unbelieving trailer. To buy this Pacific proximity and your rig’s 200 square feet in, like, Malibu? You would have to sell your mother. For starters. But drag a house behind your car – or make your car your house? Boom. Let freedom ring. In Santa Barbara – globally revered chief chakra in California’s

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body electric – less conspicuous rigs ply the beachfront. Nice place, Santa Barbara? Yeah, I guess – if you’re into mountains, sea, and stupefying beauty. Our lovely weather, welcoming locals, and pleasantly unchanging mien – you could call Santa Barbara a homeostasis oasis – has made our sun-drenched Central Coast bauble California’s crown jewel. Naturally, Santa Barbara’s waterfront Cabrillo Boulevard – statuesque palms, lawn yoga, drum circles, sailboats bobbing in furiously happy sunshine – is often a curbside menagerie of homes on wheels.

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es, there are speed bumps. The town welcomes the vehicular nomad in spirit, but there are… rules. Section 10.44.200 of Santa Barbara’s Municipal Code is an unsparing scroll of ordinance argot and finger-wagging. No sleeping in your ride. On the other hand, the city’s Safe Parking program – in coordination with an archipelago of donated nighttime lots – does what it can to accommodate those living in their cars, providing a safe, citation-free space until sunrise. Santa Barbara as Ma Teresa of the Motorized? Hell yeah. This #trailerlife thing (or whatever it’s called) has exploded, and is manifesting. “We offer 20 luxurious vintage trailers of our own for those looking for a refreshing experience,” explains Joy Suarez, manager of Ventura’s Waypoint – a trailer hotel located a block

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from Ventura Pier and a stone’s throw from the town’s chewy center. The Waypoint is a convocation of amazingly appointed aluminum trailers – “from restored vintage to modern luxury” – buffed to a maddeningly beautiful finish, interior designed like nobody’s bidness, and absolutely radiant with post-irony California schwing. “The property is designed with the emphasis on community,” affirms assistant manager Danielle Stanford. “The grounds are peppered with gathering spaces to encourage a communal, relaxing setting where you can meet fellow travelers.” Suarez adds, “Travelers are leaving the larger cities to check out our open-air beach town.” I can imagine. The brainchild of brother and sister Carey and Kelsey Jonker in 2018, the Waypoint convened a gaggle of over-excited

PHOTOS COURTESY WAYPOINT VENTURA

craftspeople whose collective skillset is evident in the 20 blindingly beautiful trailers that comprise the Waypoint’s cozy community. The place even has 15 spaces for accommodating visiting trailers – the kind that roll. And the “rooms” aren’t all Airstreams. “Our restored vintage trailers include Spartan, Airstream, Avion, Boles Aero, Silver Streak, Streamline, The Palace Travel Coach Corporation, Westcraft, Vagabond – all manufactured from the 1940s through the 1970s,” Suarez says brightly. And they’re always open to adding more rooms. “When a special trailer is found in great original shape,” Danielle says, “it’s restored to its… showroom grandeur! This means stripping the trailer down to the studs and rebuilding it to its original condition. And adding some extras of course.”

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irstream. {sigh.} You can map the company’s runaway success to founder Wally Byam’s (1896-1962) evolving public portrait; from squinty, beanie-wearing stick figure to bespoke spectacles-dangling colossus, his arm draped over a globe, dolorous eyes locking with those of the discomfited viewer. Airstream had been selling steadily for some 20 years when, in 1956, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (or the Interstate Highway System, as it’s more calmingly known) blew rich gasoline into an already occupied combustion chamber. The appearance of machined interstate roads you could drive on without perforating your pancreas? Catnip to the lakeside louche. Airstream took off. The macabre silver trailer can seem as exotic and unnerving a thing as Michael Rennie’s flying saucer on the White House lawn – rivetblistered, jet-like metal suggesting supersonic flight on this thing shaped like the lobe of a troubled organ. But Wally had come up with an ideal that transcended both the campfire culture and the quicksilver carriage that reflected it. The ideal still holds. “We treasure the iconic styling of the silver Twinkie design of Airstream,” concedes Gary Mellinger, retired firefighter and, for the past 15 years, member chair of the Central Coast California Airstream Club. “But the absolute best thing about our trailer is the Airstream family and fellowship that we’ve shared since owning our rig. Our best friends now are our Airstream friends.”

APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUTS RELAX IN AN AIRSTREAM QUARANTINE FACILITY, 1969

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PHOTOS COURTESY LIVING VEHICLE

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oanna Hofmann’s bold daylight heresy is spoken disarmingly enough, and the birds do not fall from the trees. “The Airstream is – you know, everybody loves it because it’s iconic, it’s fun. It’s kitschy! But it’s not functional at all.” She’s discussing the virtues of interior right angles and headroom as we tour a Living Vehicle – Joanna and husband Matthew’s blue-chip reply to the RV space’s unwillingness to produce timeproof mobile houses for actual full-time Living. The Recreational Vehicle versus the Living Vehicle, you see. Just a happy accident that “LV” suggests heartstrings, too. The LV comes in three base flavors, each of which the purchaser may choose to augment from a deep bench of extras, including (and this is not a full list) off-road capability, home theater, spa bathroom, chef ’s kitchen, and something called the Automatic Euroloft, which helpfully adds both a sixth bed and the word “Euro” to the luxury ride. The comparatively affordable CORE model, when purchased feature-free, won’t cost you much more than a Bentley Continental GT Convertible. The bare bones top-line PRO model is sticker priced in the Rolls-Royce Phantom ballpark. MAX is, counterintuitively, in the middle. Matthew and Joanna – both alarmingly (suspiciously, even) tall, blond, and attractive – would be considered distastefully obvious LV brand ambassadors, but for the fact that they are its brilliant innovators. The Living Vehicle is the right home at the right time, and its 2022 iteration boasts the carbon footprint equivalent of perpetual motion: net-zero energy use. You will still need a full-size, octane-gulping truck to pull the thing (“...towing capacity of at least 16,000 pounds for a CORE configuration, and 18,000 pounds for a PRO... and a payload rating of at least 3,000 pounds…”), but Rome wasn’t built in a day. These gorgeous penthouse suites on wheels marry freedom of movement to the coddling comfort that is usually the first sacrifice to liberation from the House. The LV is being cleverly – and justifiably, sort of – positioned in the marketing space as an escape from the controlling mitts of the grid, and thus the Establishment. When I timidly suggest that the LV’s price point may mean Matthew and Joanna are selling to the Establishment they hint at wanting to dismantle – there is bristling. “Big Picture” emerges like a storm cloud. “We’re starting to see the emergence of a transfer of power,” Matthew says with a politely fixed expression. “From a few very large companies down to where we can create our own energy.” His point is well-taken. Living Vehicle in the marketplace will ultimately fetch that sticker price commensurate with the scale of its mission – weaning us from a monopolized power grid to which we’ve become helplessly integrated, and to which our houses affix us through future-curdling financial instruments. But the grid as food and drink: that’s the unsettling point. “What happens when the well runs dry?” Matthew asks, and not rhetorically. He leans forward, eyes aglow with purpose. “We can create the things that we need.” Okay, then. The LV may or may not democratize our collective break from the all-controlling grid, but the Hofmanns have kicked a door open. The market will either even the playing field or divide us further according to wheelbase. But Matthew, Joanna, and their Living Vehicle may well represent our common mobile future – wherein independence and interdependence benevolently fuse to free us from forces that would rather we stayed put. Wouldn’t that be extraordinary?

#VANLIFE.

PHOTOS BY KEVIN SCANLON

PHOTO COURTESY LIVING VEHICLE

It’s a fever of sometimes indeterminate origin. On Santa Barbara’s Cabrillo Boulevard I meet a Bulgarian named Alex. He’s been traveling all over the USA with two newish American friends, the three of them living in his happily crowded van. Listening to him exult on the freedom of the open road (where do they get this stuff?) I start wondering. Has this excitable Bulgarian wanderer ever heard of Jack Kerouac? “You kinda remind me of him,” I say. Alex’s expression is quizzical. I quickly synopsize On the Road. “Whoa!” Alex says, suddenly avid. He fumblingly produces his cell phone. “Kerouac… how do you spell his name?”

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CHAIRWOMAN

ARTIST INGA GUZYTE IN HER STUDIO PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES

ade from upcycled skateboards and riddled with telling imagery, the artwork of Inga Guzyte captures the spirit of California while addressing global issues in elegant form. Although locals have a familiarity with her art, Guzyte is now about to enter the national spotlight. Guzyte was one of 41 finalists (from 2,700 entries) for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition that the Smithsonian Institution sponsors every three years. The artworks, in a variety of mediums, will soon be on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. from April 30 through February 26, 2023, followed by a countrywide tour from spring 2023 to summer 2024.

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& CHAIRMAN

OF THE BOARDS STORY BY ZACHARY ROSEN

MASTER CARPENTER KIRK PONTO APPLYING HIS SKILLS TO THIS MAHOGANY DOOR WITH A MODERN PATCHWORK DESIGN

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CALIFORNIA POPPY AND OTHER ARTWORKS WERE ON DISPLAY AT THE MOAH IN LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA, ALSO HOME TO THE POPPY RESERVES (PHOTOS BY JEREMY TESSMER)

GUZYTE’S EXHIBIT “KINDRED SPIRITS” CELEBRATED FEMALE ARTISTS, AS IN LITTLE FIRES

ith her work entering the national purview of art, it has been a long path from her love for skateboarding as a teenager, to a career in art, and eventually meeting her master carpenter husband, Kirk Ponto. While these two master woodworkers came from different backgrounds, they found each other through a mutual passion for their respective crafts. As a teenager, Guzyte had loved art and would always receive compliments on her works but was still unsure of where to go in life. After some reflecting, she decided to move to Santa Barbara. “I chose the place sort of at random,” she says, “I mean, I knew of the TV show Santa Barbara because it was wildly popular in Europe. More importantly, I knew that the West Coast was THE place to go for skateboarding.” The Lithuanian-born Guzyte moved to Germany with her family when she was about 10 years old. In Germany, she was introduced to skateboarding. “I knew that I’d never become a professional skater,” she says, “but I still loved it.”

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uzyte left the big indoor skateparks of Westphalia in 2007 for the hopeful skies of Santa Barbara. “I came here to study English for three months and I spent pretty much every day at the skate park. I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends.” After her English studies, she attended Santa Barbara City College and began to focus more on art. As she delved deeper into her classes, Guzyte found an inherent gift for what has become her art. “I took a sculpture class where we were encouraged to experiment with materials, find your medium – that’s one of those things artists are always looking for,” she says. “I just had skateboards laying around and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll just cut them up and use these as my palette.’” That’s when she began developing her signature style of artworks composed from upcycled skateboard decks. “I loved that the material had lived,” she says. “And I loved bringing it back to life, often in portraits of women, crafting my heroines from skateboard – a sport that has mostly been a male endeavor.” After some moving around, Guzyte graduated from SBCC in 2015. This also meant she no longer had an easily available art space to work in, so she began looking for a woodshop. A friend connected her to the shop of Paul Schurch, a specialist in multidimensional marquetry artworks and kinetic furniture. He didn’t have any room in his own workshop but connected Guzyte with a fellow friend and master carpenter who did – Kirk Ponto.

THE SIMPLE, ELEGANT LINES AND LAYERED TEXTURES OF PONTO’S WORK CAN BE SEEN IN THIS WALNUT WOOD BAR

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GUZYTE’S GREETING THE SUN (PHOTO BY JEREMY TESSMER)

A PIVOT DOOR MADE OF WALNUT FROM PONTO WOODWORKING

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A DETAIL FROM CALIFORNIA POPPY (PHOTO BY JEREMY TESSMER)

PHOTO BY EDWARD CLYNES

onto was born and raised in Santa Barbara until he was 12, surfing almost every day, before heading to Idaho. Growing up around lots of craftsmen, he learned everything he could, even working in a mill during high school. His first actual job in carpentry was as a commercial framer, and within six months he had become the lead framer of the 35-person company. Ponto was eventually drawn back to Santa Barbara where for six years he worked as the lead installer for a local cabinet shop before starting his own company, Ponto Woodworking, in 2012. Ponto absorbed everything he could and spent the next 10 or so years mastering his craft while shaping his own surfboards in the process. Although proud of the company he has built, he is most proud of the people who work within his company and the collective knowledge they have. “I’m more focused on design these days whereas I used to be doing it all,” he says. “One of our guys is – in my opinion – the best furniture maker in the world. I had to hire him out of retirement. Then there’s my shop foreman who has 30 years of fine cabinet making experience. Both had been mentors to me when I was younger, and now we all learn from each other.” Ponto met Guzyte as a fully realized artist, but now that they’re married, he has tried to help where he can. “Some of my knowledge of tools – that has probably been my foremost contribution to her work. The main tool that she uses, the scroll saw, that’s the significant weapon I’ve introduced,” says the expert carpenter. “If I’m honest about it though, she helps me a lot more than I help her. She is unquestionably a master woodworker in her own right.” Guzyte’s skill has become increasingly more popular, with establishments such as the iconic Sullivan Goss gallery and The Museum of Art & History in Lancaster displaying her art in group and solo shows. With show names such as “#RebelWomen” and “Young Sparrows,” which celebrates the spirit of young female activists and icons like Malala Yousafzai, Guzyte’s artwork has a notable feminist bent that focuses on the strength of these women and their impact on the world – buoyed by the strength of the materials Guzyte uses to express their power. The upcycled skateboards also inlay meaning of reuse and environmentalism. Each art piece weaves broken boards into new forms with the rebellious flare of a skateboarder and the societal awareness of a world traveler. The stunning figures and forms have the mosaic quality of stained glass with the strength of the seven-layer veneer that skateboards use. Each of the shaped pieces are tightly woven together with brilliant tones that capture the vibrancy of their subjects. From aspirational figures to Kindred Spirits, Guzyte has profiled a variety of subjects over the years. But which inspiring person did she portray for the Outwin Boochever competition? The Smithsonian is keeping that secret until the show goes up in April. Santa Barbara will be watching, and so will the nation.

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS BY KELLY MAHAN HERRICK

t’s not surprising that Montecito and Santa Barbara are host to many über-talented design visionaries. Surrounded by impeccable and historic architecture on seemingly every street, architects, interior and landscape designers, contractors, and stylists can find their inspiration at every turn here on the American Riviera. Following in the footsteps of their counterparts of generations past, the following is a list of some of the best-of-the-best local vendors who are offering their services to help elevate your home and space.

photo courtesy of Goop

photo by Jim Bartsch

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photo by Jason Rick

MASTERPIECE MAKERS

AB DESIGN STUDIO, INC.

ogether, Clay Aurell and Josh Blumer bring more than 20 years of passion, experience, and creativity to explorative designs that reflect client, context, and history. Whether it is evoking the authentic essence of historic buildings and structures through adaptive reuse or creating a new ground-up commercial office space, AB design studio ensures that each project communicates a strong signature design solution for client and community, resulting in a seamless identity among concept, brand, and space. The firm’s architecture, interior design, and planning talents are applied to a variety of project types, including cultural, childcare, retail, hospitality, commercial, healthcare, education, multi- and single-family residential, and experimental archetypes. Whether new construction, adaptive reuse, renovation, or interior design, AB design studio promotes innovative techniques, responsible material palettes, and sustainable strategies to create architecturally driven, globally conscious environments that inspire and empower. AB design studio’s innovation and design expertise have led to numerous awards from prestigious programs including the American Institute of Architects Design Awards, PCBC Gold Nugget Awards, Santa Barbara Beautiful Awards, CCGBC Green Awards, Interior Design Best of the Year Awards, Hospitality Design Awards, Architectural Record’s Record Houses Awards, and the California Home + Design Awards.

More information can be found at abdesignstudioinc.com.

(photos by Jason Rick Photography)

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS

ANN JAMES INTERIORS

nown for creating exceptional homes, Ann James is a Santa Barbara-based interior designer specializing in custom design. Her clients are as varied and diverse as the interiors she creates for them. Ranging from the latest in contemporary design to a more traditional approach, a sophisticated sense of style imbues each project. The thread that connects her work is extraordinary attention to detail and quality, with an emphasis on livability. For more than 30 years, she has designed homes throughout the Western United States, and is familiar with the latest sources and vendors in the field. From cottages on the beach in Montecito, to ranches in Santa Ynez, to modern homes on Santa Barbara’s Riviera, Ann is known for creating timeless, beautiful spaces, which are both distinctive and inviting. photo by Craig Bernardi

More information can be found at annjamesinteriors.com.

photo by Jim Bartsch

APPLETON PARTNERS LLP

ounded in 1976, Appleton Partners LLP maintains offices in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, California. The firm’s design work has received many awards and has been published in Architectural Digest, Town & Country, Sunset, and other periodicals. With the support of Partners Ken Mineau, Andrew Scott, and an exemplary design team, founding Principal Marc Appleton has been consistently ranked in Architectural photos by Matt Walla Digest’s Top 100 designers from 1991 to 2016. The firm has designed more than 800 diverse projects specializing in the planning and the architectural and landscape design of custom residential, institutional, and commercial projects. Appleton Partners’ designs reflect their collaborative process with their clients, inspired by their specific desires, needs, program, and budget. The location, environment, and siting of each project strongly influence this process. A harmonious relationship between the built form and the landscape is always priority. Whether contemporary or traditional in style, their diverse designs strive for an appreciation of place and time. photo by Alexander Veritoff

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More information can be found at appleton-architects.com.

MASTERPIECE MAKERS

BIRGIT KLEIN INTERIORS

irgit Klein Interiors is a boutique interior design studio based in Montecito and Los Angeles with a retail showroom in the Upper Village of Montecito. The focus is on residential interior design, from initial conception to final completion as well as the styling of homes. Namesake and founder Birgit Klein founded the studio in 2006 in London

before opening a studio in L.A. in 2011, Montecito in 2015, and a retail showroom in 2019. With her European background and experience, Klein collaborates with many artisans and vendors from Europe to create livable, timeless interiors that are layered with texture, color, and patterns. Her tailored approach allows alignment of Klein’s vision with that of the clients’ tastes and lifestyles, creating truly bespoke homes that are both beautiful and functional. More information can be found at birgitklein.com.

(photos courtesy Birgit Klein Interiors)

BOB EASTON AIA ARCHITECT

ob Easton has been an architect in Montecito for many years, producing many fine homes featuring fresh interpretations of both old and new traditions. He believes that great design transcends style, and he has mastered many design traditions. Respect for tradition has enabled him to do substantial residential renovations on George Washington Smith and Francis Underhill classics. He has renovated three of Montecito’s most iconic public buildings: the Montecito Country Club (1995-2000), the photo by Craig Richter Old Firehouse (1995-1996), and most recently, All Saints by-the-Sea Episcopal Church (2014-2021). A fourth-generation Californian, he grew up in Los Angeles and studied architecture at UC Berkeley and the AA in London. He has won four local design awards and has designed houses in Hawaii, Arizona, and throughout California, and has done projects for many well-known people in the entertainment industry. Besides architecture, he has co-authored and designed award-winning books on architecture, including Santa Barbara Architecture, the locally produced compendium of Santa Barbara’s architectural history. photo by Jim Bartsch

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS

BRYANT DESIGN STUDIO

ryant Design Studio is a full-service design firm that provides designs for unique and exceptional homes. The firm’s reputation has been built on classical yet creative design and an impeccable attention to detail. From conceptual ideas to renderings – through the working drawings and details to the bidding and construction – the firm is there every step of the way, handing all aspects of the process. Bryant Design Studio provides all the services necessary to bring a client’s dream home to life. For nearly 100 years, owner Carl Bryant’s family has been involved in the architectural and design fields, starting with his grandfather’s photo by Carl Bryant graduation from Cornell University School of Architecture in 1917. Having been given many of his grandfather’s tools, drawings, and blueprints at the age of nine, Carl knew his future was to create great architecture for people to live in and be inspired by. Drawn by its rich architectural history, Carl moved to the Santa Barbara/Montecito area, opening his own firm in 1994. Over the last 35 years Carl has designed many custom residential projects, from small homes to multi-million-dollar estates. His portfolio features traditional architectural designs with an emphasis on the classic Mediterranean styles evocative of the Golden Age of California Architecture. photo by Jim Bartsch

More information can be found at bryantdesignstudio.com.

BYSUN BUILDING

oel Benjamin, a Santa Barbara native, founded Bysun Building with the following premise: that the additional cost of employing the absolute finest and most professional tradesmen and craftspeople at every stage of a construction project, would be offset by a smoother process, quicker timelines, photo courtesy of Mejuri less callbacks, happier clients, word-of-mouth referrals, and an overall better product. Having quickly gained a reputation for quality and efficiency, Bysun Building was brought on to tackle the build-out of the Goop’s Sundries Shop in the Rosewood Miramar Beach Hotel during its construction. That project, which included floor-to-ceiling custom cabinetry and wall paneling with integrated lighting, sound, and high-gloss lacquer finish was completed ahead of schedule, and to such degree of craftsmanship that the Caruso team took notice. They asked that Bysun Building stay on and enlisted them to help complete various complicated and detail-intensive finishing touches on the rest of the Rosewood Miramar Beach Hotel build. Since then, Bysun Building has completed several projects at the Rosewood Miramar Beach Hotel ranging from the build-out of the spa store to the complete interior reconstruction of an entire wing of Lanai Suites. They have also maintained their relationship with Goop, revamping their Brentwood location and taking part in the build-out of their location on the big island. Other notable projects include the completion of Mejuri’s first brick-and-mortar jewelry shop on Melrose. While Bysun Building continues to take on high-end commercial projects, the majority of their projects are residential estates for clients with impeccable taste, high standards, and photo courtesy of Goop tight deadlines. More information can be found at bysunbuilt.com. 266

(photos courtesy Adrian Gaut, Mejuri)

MASTERPIECE MAKERS

ELIZABETH DINKEL DESIGN ASSOCIATES

lizabeth Dinkel Design Associates is a full-service interior design firm based in Los Angeles, California. Elizabeth Dinkel has been called a true American classicist. Her projects range in style and vernacular from a modern beach house to a George Washington Smith Monterey Colonial. Elizabeth’s clients value her close collaboration throughout the design process and her ability to create beautifully composed rooms that are entirely livable and customized. Her homes are imbued with a sense of charm and timelessness, often juxtaposing carefully curated antiques with modern pieces to build originality into classic styles. Quality, craftsmanship, and attention to detail are the hallmarks of all her projects. Elizabeth is recognized by House Beautiful, Elle Décor, Veranda, Luxe, and California Homes & Interiors as one of America’s leading interior designers. She has completed projects in Santa Barbara, New York, San Francisco, Jackson Hole, Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, Washington, and New England. Elizabeth is a graduate of Georgetown University and attended the New York School of Interior Design. She has played a significant role in the Southern California design community, and as such, serves on the board of the Institute for Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) and the Design Leadership Network (DLN).

More information can be found at elizabethdinkeldesign.com.

(photos by Nancy Neil Photography)

HARRISON DESIGN

arrison Design specializes in high-end residential architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture for clients throughout the United States and abroad. The firm has developed a reputation for excellence in design, responsiveness to clients, and unparalleled project execution. A local network of artisans and builders ensures that the quality photo by Jim Bartsch of the design is matched by the caliber of the material and workmanship. The firm’s work has garnered numerous awards and has been featured in design publications including Architectural Digest, Veranda, Luxe, and Traditional Home, among others. Harrison Design has been designing for the Montecito community for more than 20 years, completing over 85 projects in Montecito during that time including new construction, renovations and additions, and historic rehabilitation and restoration for notable estates. Members of the firm have been deeply involved in the Montecito community, including serving on the Lotusland Board of Trustees, in addition to pro-bono work on the property towards the historic restoration and beautification of capital projects. The firm has hosted talks for groups in the Montecito area on the history and architecture of Montecito, provided multiple years of service on the Montecito Board of Architecture Review, and donated over 1,000 hours of community service after the Tea Fire and Thomas Fire, including the clean-up and reconstruction after the Montecito mudslides. photo photo by Nicholas Altiere by Jim Bartsch More information can be found at harrisondesign.com.

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS

JODI G. DESIGNS

odi G. Designs is a full-service design house led by Jodi Goldberg and her 20 years of interior design experience. The Jodi G. Designs team works closely with clients to curate dream homes and commercial spaces from start to finish. Jodi’s transformative and holistic approach to design has earned her a following of loyal clients who rely on her expertise to cultivate unique spaces. Jodi G. Designs manages projects from initial concept to final installation, working collaboratively with architects, builders, and clients. Jodi’s team offers acute attention to detail, communication, and exceptional service. Jodi has been the creative force behind many of Santa Barbara’s most stylish spaces since she laid roots here more than 20 years ago. Jodi craves design challenges and opportunities to bring interiors and landscapes to life all while reflecting her clients’ personal taste and style. She takes a unique approach to each project, drawing upon her styling career and global travels for inspiration.

More information can be found at jodigdesigns.com.

(photos by Riley Yahr Photography)

MARC NORMAND GELINAS INTERIOR DESIGN & ANTIQUES

esigning interiors for more than 36 years, Marc Normand Gelinas is best known for his classic and inviting photo by Jim Bartsch designs, reflecting his knowledge of color, scale, and art background. He believes that each project should reflect the personality and personal style of each client, giving them a well-designed, comfortable, and functional space. His extensive time in New York and Paris give him a unique perspective on aesthetic plans. Since 1987 he has consulted on projects from New York to Santa Barbara, Aspen, and Rhode Island. Marc’s work has been published several times in such well-known publications as House Beautiful and Traditional Home. An honors graduate of the acclaimed Pratt Institute in New York City, Marc earned a BFA in Interior Design. He sits on several nonprofit boards including Montecito’s Casa del Herrero Board of Directors. photo by David Palermo

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More information can be found at marcnormandgelinas.com.

MASTERPIECE MAKERS

photo by Patrick Price

MATT CONSTRUCTION

ATT Construction is a high-end general contractor known for building some of California’s most iconic buildings. Founded in 1991 by Paul, Steve, and Al Matt in Los Angeles, MATT Construction has grown to nearly 200 employees with Southern and Northern California offices. MATT’s portfolio is extremely diverse, with deep expertise in estate homes, world-class museums and cultural spaces, luxury hotels and residences, private school campuses, life science facilities, creative office spaces, and adaptive reuse projects. Their family work ethic, teamwork, and general contracting experience position MATT Construction as one of California’s top diversified general contractors. The company’s guiding philosophy is to always do the right thing in the interest of the project and the client and work diligently and creatively toward achieving that client’s unique goals. MATT believes that if all parties are aligned toward the common interest of a project’s overall success, everyone wins when that project is successfully delivered. Founded on the MATT family’s legacy of integrity and passion for building great buildings, MATT Construction has earned a reputation for quality and a commitment to win/win teamwork. More information can be found at mattconstruction.com.

photo by Jan Schuenke

photo by Jason O’Rear

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS

MLK STUDIO

LK Studio is a full-service interior design firm, undertaking high-end residential and boutique commercial projects. The Studio works on groundup construction projects as well as large-scale renovations, always tailored to the client’s high expectation of luxury, comfort, and elegance. With the belief that home is one’s sanctuary, the Studio showcases timeless, exquisite interiors that are pleasing to the eye but also functional. Almost every project includes bespoke furniture and rugs designed specifically for that home. The work begins with a deep appreciation and study of the architectural plans for the project. MLK Studio believes that the interior design and interior architecture of each project should harmonize with the architecture itself. The goal is always to provide outstanding client services, while also integrating seamlessly into the rest of the construction team. Interior design has been Meg Joannides’ passion from a very early age. With her broad base of creative experience in fashion, interior design, and architecture in Europe, New York, and currently Los Angeles, she strives to create environments that express and elevate the lifestyle of each individual client. More information can be found at mlkstudio.com. (photos by Roger Davies)

MCKEAN CONSTRUCTION

or more than 22 years, McKean Construction has been creating custom homes, remodels, and additions throughout Santa Barbara County. With each project, the company is building on its stellar reputation by working with clients and architects to deliver quality and affordability. Their team of skilled carpenters – and their close relationships with vendors and subcontractors in the area – is one of the keys to their success. Aaron McKean has been in the construction industry since 1985 and is passionate about what he does, always going the extra distance to ensure a superior finished product. He has specialized in building and remodeling all styles of architecture: Cape, Victorian, Spanish, and Contemporary on homes in Cape Cod, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara County. Aaron has proven to be an honest, competitive, and respected builder with an attention to detail, mindfulness of budget, and has a relentless desire to make visions materialize. McKean Construction has been featured in Design LA, Dwell Magazine, Residential Design Magazine, and The Architect Tours of 2012 of Santa Barbara. Aaron McKean has also served on the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara Contractors Association. More information can be found at mckeanconstruction.net. (photos by Jessica Dalene Photography)

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MASTERPIECE MAKERS

SKYELINE CONSTRUCTION INC.

kyeLine strives to be a high-value contracting company: big enough to take on large projects but small enough to not lose sight of the customer. Owner Skye McGinnes is personally involved in some way with every project, and the company’s inherent value is that much of the work is performed in-house and not by outside trade contractors. SkyeLine preforms concrete work, framing, plumbing, tile, and finish work in-house. With a background in restaurants and a master’s degree in Business Administration, Skye strives to provide excellent service, while being mindful of budget and scope. A native of Santa Barbara, Skye’s passion for finding solutions fuels his love of the business; he believes it’s all about smart and sustainable, economical choices, as well as making the client’s dream come to fruition. More information can be found at skyelineinc.com.

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(photos by Jake Cryan)

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SANCTUARY STATE STORY BY JESSICA RITZ PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELIZABETH DANIELS PRODUCED BY STEFFIE NELSON

WITH THE VAST PACIFIC OCEAN SERVING AS PART OF THE “DECOR,” WINICK ARCHITECTS FLIPS THE BEACH COTTAGE CONCEPT WITH A CONTEMPORARY HAVEN AS SPECTACULAR AS ITS SETTING 272

THE HOMEOWNERS ENJOY A TYPICALLY BEAUTIFUL SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC WITH ARCHITECT BARRY WINICK AND ARTIST LINDA SACCOCCIO (SEATED)

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T’S LIKE BEING ON THE PROW OF A SHIP,” architect Barry Winick observes, standing on the cantilevered deck of a Shoreline Drive house where it feels like you could step onto the glassy expanse of the Pacific and reach the Channel Islands in a matter of seconds. Deceptively thin ribbons of stainless steel encircle the perch while still welcoming the light and breeze. A majestic Monterey cypress tree stands guard at the edge of the 80-foot-high bluff. This vignette is just one of many showstoppers at the contemporary beach “cottage,” where sheer faces of glass draw the ocean straight into the space.

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OR WINICK’S CLIENTS – a couple who fantasized about a home on the American Riviera since the days of their courtship – the property represents “the culmination of a lifelong dream,” says one of the owners. The pair envisioned a sanctuary built for deep relaxation and family celebrations, and when they decided to replace the previous house that stood on the site, “we wanted to build not only something special for ourselves, but also for our neighborhood.” Their arresting architectural statement, whose floating form is visible from the street, was initially met with resistance in this part of Santa Barbara, where the vernacular is more Cape Cod than California THE EXPANSIVE VIEW OF THE PACIFIC FROM THE LIVING ROOM TOWARD THE CHANNEL ISLANDS IS OUTFITTED WITH A SOFA AND LOUNGE CHAIR AND OTTOMAN SET BY MINOTTI THE UPPER WALKWAY ACCESSED FROM THE PRIMARY SUITE FACING THE HILLS INCLUDES MORE OUTDOOR SEATING AS WELL AS AN HERB GARDEN

modern. But after the presentation of a 3D model of the house – whose gabled, copperfinished roof and rectangular forms nod to the simple beach cottage silhouette – the project was unanimously approved by the County Planning Commission. “They told me, ‘We are only going to do this once,’” the architect recalls. “They invited us to make the house a work of art.” Winick’s portfolio encompasses both residential design and commercial work including more than a dozen Louis Vuitton boutiques. He spent nearly two decades working in New York with famed architect Peter Marino, known for his daring, sumptuous estates and retail environments, before founding Marino’s Santa Barbara office and then Winick Architects, Inc. in 2009. Winick was already familiar with the hurdles and idiosyncrasies of the Shoreline Drive location, having worked with the family next door, and his new clients essentially gave him carte blanche to design a structure that “relates to the bluff.” The pitched, copper-finished roof nods to the local beach cottages, and the juxtaposition of gabled and rectangular forms sketches a strong silhouette. The house is set deeply back on the lot, as close

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THE PRIMARY SUITE’S INDOOR/OUTDOOR FLOW CONNECTS TO THE TERRACE WITH A SPA ENCASED IN STAINLESS STEEL

to the edge of the bluff as a safety zone based on a 75-year erosion projection would allow. Winick’s “upside-down” plan contains the kitchen, dining and living rooms, plus the primary suite upstairs, with the entrance and two guest bedrooms situated below. The breezeway and carport are located at ground level – a parking solution Winick finds more “elegant” than a garage. X-brace steel structural components on the carport are exposed, highlighting the artistry in its engineering. “The structural system was employed creatively to enhance our aesthetic choices, thus emphasizing the sculptural qualities of the residence,” Winick says, pointing to the simpatico partnership with building contractors Giffin & Crane and structural engineers Taylor & Syfan.

MULTIPLE OUTDOOR SPACES PROVIDE THE FEELING OF BEING BOTH GROUNDED ON THE CLIFF AND CANTILEVERED OVER THE OCEAN — BUT ALWAYS CLOSELY INTEGRATED WITH WINICK ARCHITECTS’ DESIGN. OUTDOOR FURNISHINGS ARE BY KETTAL.

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CUSTOMIZED CLUSTERS OF PENDANT GLASS BULBS IN THE STAIRWELL ARE FROM THE BOLLE COLLECTION BY GIOPATO & COOMBES AND WERE SOURCED AT GARDE IN SUMMERLAND

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PORTHOLE WINDOWS REPURPOSED FROM A SUBMARINE IN THE OUTDOOR SHOWER ARE THE LONE FEATURE REMAINING FROM THE PREVIOUS STRUCTURE THAT STOOD ON THE PROPERTY

N OUTDOOR KITCHEN AND A SHOWER with two submarine portholes integrated into the wall – the only physical pieces that were retained and repurposed from the original home – magnify the beauty and functionality of the breezeway. The wood siding is Cumaru, a dense tropical hardwood Winick first used for a Louis Vuitton project in Hawaii. When the owners purchased the adjacent property, Winick and Deborah Shaw Restoration + Landscape designed an expansive garden with differentiated zones for meditative meandering, fruit and vegetable beds, and a fire pit. Jewel box-like sophisticated interior details demonstrate Winick’s expertise in designing lavish retail and luxury environments. “There’s a luxuriousness and sense of texture,” he notes, along with a certain subtlety that also applies to his work for other clients such as Hermès and Chanel as well as the Coral Casino Beach and Cabana Club and Biltmore Hotel in Montecito. Custom plaster wall and ceiling finishes read as matte when seen in brighter conditions but shine in indirect light. Radiant heating warms the Mocha Creme limestone floors, and all systems and storage are hidden behind meticulously crafted millwork. Mechanical louvers of copper-finished aluminum are designed to control the views on the west elevation; calibrated to the degree, they shift silently to provide constant shadow play. Natural and controlled light interact with dazzling effect in the mirrored stairwell, where customized clusters of pendant glass orbs from the Bolle collection by Giopato & Coombes create an exuberant and surprising composition. Low-iron safety glass encloses the steel-frame and plain sawn-oak cantilevered staircase, and the glass transitions to a mirrored surface on the interior wall of the stairwell, reflecting the light installation with a little funhouse flair. “I like big, broad brushstrokes,” Winick says while highlighting certain elements upstairs. In the main shared living area and the primary bedroom suite, using a similar palette and materials allows for nuance. Cerused oak cabinets in the kitchen relate to the solid oak plank ceiling treatment and French oak flooring in the open plan space. The whole interior design scheme is essentially an exercise in “tone on tone” – with one notable standout: an elevator clad in vivid lilac. A minimalist Metallico dining table by Piero Lissoni for Porro, and Ligne Roset chairs and stools add to the overall sense that in this home, luxury can be quiet and understated. If it’s too windy to watch the sunset outdoors, the generous Minotti living room sofa also defers to the most important presence – the ocean.

CUMARU WOOD SIDING LENDS AN EARTHY, WARM TONE AND CONTRASTS WITH THE OCEAN VIEWS IN THE BREEZEWAY, WHICH ALSO CONTAINS AN OUTDOOR KITCHEN

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FOR WINICK’S CLIENTS – A COUPLE WHO FANTASIZED ABOUT A HOME ON THE AMERICAN RIVIERA SINCE THE DAYS OF THEIR COURTSHIP – THE PROPERTY REPRESENTS “THE CULMINATION OF A LIFELONG DREAM.”

THE CARPORT AT LEFT IS SUPPORTED BY AN X-BRACE SYSTEM, WITH ANOTHER GARDEN TERRACE SITUATED ABOVE. THE PITCHED ROOF ELEMENT COMBINED WITH CUMARU WOOD AND SMOOTH PLASTER SURFACES ARE CONTEMPORARY YET COMPATIBLE WITH THE LOCAL ARCHITECTURAL VERNACULAR

HE BEDROOM SUITE IS FLANKED BY TERRACES to the north and south, and both are fitted with a louvered, paneled ceiling with tightly interlocking panels to create what are essentially the ultimate outdoor room experiences. A row of slim windows in the east façade lends a Luis Barragán-inflected rhythm. Limestone flooring is continuous indoors and out, down to the placing of the joint lines. The north terrace holds a stainless steel-clad spa where one can opt for the ocean vista or gaze into the glittering lights of the homes tucked into the hillside of the Mesa. For the owners, the reality of the home actually surpassed their fantasies. “We can sit with the west wind blowing across us, or protected from it, and watch the moon rise and light up the ocean, or stare at the stars. No doubt, this is our slice of paradise.”

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Raoul Textiles

136 state street 805 -899 - 4947 open by appointment - retail & trade

REAL ESTATES

BY KELLY MAHAN HERRICK

Kelly is a licensed realtor with the Calcagno & Hamilton team of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, specializing in Montecito, Santa Barbara, and the Santa Ynez Valley

alifornia’s southern Central Coast, the American Riviera, is known for its impeccable weather, lush landscape, incredible architecture and design, and bourgeoning art, theater, and culinary scenes, while effortlessly maintaining a small-town atmosphere. Locals know that Santa Barbara, Montecito, and beyond have dozens of micro neighborhoods, each boasting certain elements that make them exceptional. Be it staggering ocean views from the steep streets of 282

MONTECITO SANTA BARBARA OJAI VALLEY SANTA YNEZ VALLEY

(photos by Jim Bartsch)

the Riviera; a quiet, understated semi-rural ambiance felt in upper Montecito; the bustling, lively atmosphere of downtown; the stately architectural elegance found in the Upper East; the rolling hills of vineyards in the Santa Ynez Valley; or the daily “pink moment” that illuminates the hills of Ojai each sunset; it’s no wonder why people flock here from all over the world. Here’s a closer look at eight current offerings in Montecito, Ojai, Santa Barbara, the Santa Ynez Valley, and beyond.

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MEDITERRANEAN-STYLE VILLA IN MONTECITO

his spectacular villa with interior contemporary elements is reminiscent of another time and place. Upon entering the foyer, ascending ceilings and beautiful Palladian windows highlight unobstructed mountain views. A floor-to-ceiling fireplace in the living room is the focal point of the room, complementing the grand staircase. This home boasts both a pool and hot tub, and tucked away behind the guest house is another spa area including an outdoor shower, cold plunge, and soaking tub. The 2011 construction of this home offers state-of-the-art smart home technology, upgraded security systems, and solar technology. This truly exceptional estate successfully captures the understated elegance of the Montecito lifestyle. In addition, there is an auxiliary unit perfect for an office or artist studio, with its own separate entrance and gate. Located near the Upper Village and in close proximity to shopping, dining, hiking trails, and Montecito beaches. Offered for $8,500,000 by Maureen McDermut of Sotheby’s International Realty.

(photos by Carsten Schertzer)

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MODERNIST MASTERPIECE

his AIA award-winning home was designed by renowned architect Rex Lotery for his personal residence. Set on approximately 1.15 acres, this 4 bed + office, 4.5-bath main residence offers the perfect venue for an indoor-outdoor lifestyle with a seamless transition to the gorgeous grounds, where an expansive lawn, photo by Blake Bronstad vibrant fruit trees, and premier outdoor living space, complete with a pool, spa, and fireplace with built-in radiant heated seating, await effortless entertaining year-round. The interior features striking modern design details, and expanses of glass windows and doors, capitalizing on the stunning setting, views, and natural light, with quality finishes throughout. The impressive great room serves as the focal point of the home and features soaring ceilings, a romantic separate sitting area with a fireplace, and dining area. Nearby, the gourmet kitchen, replete with abundant counter space and cabinetry, Subzero, Wolf, and Viking appliances, chef’s island, and walk-in pantry, opens to the informal dining area and main living space, offering a convenient place for hosting friends and family. The lavish primary suite opens to a private patio and hosts an intimate sitting nook, cozy fireplace, picturesque mountain views, and a sumptuous en-suite bath with a large walk-in closet. There are three additional guest bedrooms, each with en-suite baths, a glasswalled artist studio, 5,000-bottle wine cellar, and an impressive glass-roofed library. Located a stone’s throw from the esteemed Montecito Club and convenient to all Santa Barbara and Montecito have to offer, including world-class beaches, hiking trails, the Rosewood Miramar, and more. photo by Blake Bronstad Offered for $5,695,000 by Cristal Clarke of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties.

photo by Eric Foote

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MAJESTIC RANCH ESTATE

estled in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, Lieff Ranch is a historic property that seamlessly blends the character and authenticity of a 1930s cattle ranch with the elegance and comfort of an upscale estate. The 56-acre Ranch features 26 acres of income-producing vineyards growing Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Grenache, and more. Set among beautiful, mature oaks and a charming courtyard, the five-bedroom photo by Eric Foote Monterey Colonial main house exudes effortless style, incorporating many of the original vintage elements with current upgrades and conveniences. The functional floorplan features a formal entry, generous living and entertaining spaces, an office, and four finely-appointed ground-floor bedrooms. Upstairs is the private primary suite with dual dressing rooms, a large walk-in closet, and a luxurious primary bathroom. The spacious primary bedroom has vaulted ceilings, a fireplace, and is flanked by a long covered porch. The Ranch also features four charming cottages that can be used as guest houses, staff quarters, or short-term rentals. Situated at the top of the property, the Cabernet Cottage offers ultimate privacy and expansive views surrounded by stunning vineyards. With an elegant Western aesthetic, the Cowboy Cottage has two photo by Gavin Cater bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a lovely porch. The Honeymoon Cottage is a private and romantic one-bedroom with an outdoor fire pit. Lastly, the Schoolhouse Cottage is a one-bedroom charmer that formerly served as a one-room schoolhouse. The large, inviting barn has high ceilings, plumbing, and electric, and a custom copper bar ready for large-scale entertaining. The Ranch offers abundant amenities including a pool, spa, tennis and pickleball courts, horse facilities, expansive green lawns, bocce ball court, horseshoes, vegetable garden, orchard, wine storage, and ample covered parking. This property truly has it all and can serve as a private personal retreat or as an exceptional income-producing event venue and vineyard.

Offered for $16,000,000 by Randy Solakian Estates Group of Coldwell Banker Realty.

photo by Gavin Cater

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ENCOMPASSING VIEWS FROM TORO CANYON

et behind a long, gated driveway, this magical estate on roughly 10 acres showcases dramatic panoramic views of the ocean, islands, mountains, and coastlines. The stylish, approachable residence boasts four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, as well as a serene office. Rich wood, Saltillo tile, and natural stone accents bring this home to life, offering a tranquil atmosphere in which to enjoy the setting sun. The recently remodeled, contemporary kitchen boasts a large island adjacent to the dining and sitting areas, creating cohesion and approachability. Offering a coveted indoor/outdoor lifestyle, walls of glass invite the breathtaking views and serene natural setting. An open floor plan and Santa Barbara’s Mediterranean climate encourage year-round entertaining. Outside, there is a beautiful succulent and palm garden, plentiful fruit trees, beautiful oak trees, walking trails, and multiple venues for dining alfresco, relaxing, and hosting friends and family. The property is part of a mutual water company that features three off-site water wells. Defined by unmatched privacy and views yet moments from Montecito’s Upper Village, beaches, and popular hiking trails, this is an incredible opportunity to enjoy the Central Coast. Offered for $5,395,000 by J.J. Gobbell and Cristal Clarke of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services.

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(photos by Jim Bartsch)

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LILAC LEGACY PROPERTY

ast ocean views, flat grounds, luxe amenities, and incredible design coalesce at this iconic Montecito property on Lilac Drive. Flexible spaces both inside and out make this an intimate home for two yet can easily accommodate crowds of over 200. Public spaces blend seamlessly and open to the view and lush grounds beyond. A main-level primary suite offers a restful way to begin and end each day while five additional bedroom suites are perfect for loved ones or guests. The grand estate features a gym, theater, bar, game room, pool, guest house, and five-car garage. Featuring sustainable infrastructure including solar, a generator, greywater irrigation system, and a private well, living off the grid has never been more chic. The two-plus-acre property also features organic vegetable beds and citrus orchards, chicken coops, and secret gardens, defining sustainable sensibility and offering an unparalleled piece of paradise. While the home’s design is undeniably beautiful, there are many important aspects of the estate that go quietly unnoticed yet contribute significantly to the quality of life for its residents. Organic, toxin-free materials, low EMF ratings, and a home water and air filtration system foster an elevated level of wellness and a comfortable environment for those with allergen sensitivities. A greywater system and private well ensure water consciousness and lush landscaping, and a wholehouse generator offers peace of mind while living sustainably.

Listed for $33,500,000 by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties.

(photos by Jim Bartsch)

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PRIVACY ON PEPPER HILL

xperience the expansive mountain vistas and seamless indoor-outdoor living of this gorgeous SpanishMediterranean property. Featuring a spacious sunken living room, large terraced patios, grand kitchen area with breakfast bar, cozy sitting area, and romantic fireplace, and formal dining room, this home is perfect for entertaining. This residence offers four bedrooms and three bathrooms in the main house; different wings offer privacy from children or house guests. Upstairs, the primary bedroom suite boasts stunning mountain views, a soothing fireplace, walk-in closet, and a tranquil office/bedroom with Juliet balcony. The newly-built residential dwelling unit offers grand design and vaulted ceilings, as well as an elevator. Both the primary bedroom and spacious kitchen open out to an expansive balcony with soaring mountain views. There is a gorgeous pool with fountains and relaxing jacuzzi. The 1.08-acre property, with two double-car garages, is beautifully landscaped with lush plantings, graceful terracing, and mature oaks. The home is located in the Cold Spring School District and midway between Montecito’s Upper and Lower villages, offering convenience to dining, shops, beaches, and recreation.

Listed for $6,495,000 by Billy Mandarino of Engel & Volkers.

(photos by Kristin Renee)

ICONIC OJAI ESTATE

uilt in 1927, this iconic Paul Williams Spanish Colonial home has been lovingly restored while upgrading all infrastructure to modern standards. Paul Williams, a pioneering African American Los Angeles architect, designed myriad L.A. monuments, including celebrity homes, the L.A. County Courthouse, and the Theme Building at LAX. A master of proportional space, his designs were characteristically balanced, purposeful, elegant and seamlessly integrated with their natural environment. One of just two Paul Williams designs in Ojai, this home perfectly encapsulates his values to create an intimate family home that takes full advantage of its ideal location. The property includes an office, a detached studio, a pool, an expansive veranda and views of the Topa Topas. Custom original tiles decorate the fireplaces and bathrooms and the lush grounds include a grape arbor and an orchard. This unique home combines spaciousness, functionality, and aesthetics that result in unrivalled beauty and wholeness.

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Listed by Patty Waltcher of LIV Sotheby’s International Realty; price available upon request.

(photos by Logan Hall)

R E A L E S TAT E S

ELEGANCE IN RIVEN ROCK

iven Rock’s resident centurion has embarked on a new chapter full of chic design, luxe finishes, and ample amenities. Newly renovated by the Harvester Group with a reimagined floor plan, and interiors by Holly Pillar-Watson, this beautiful, ocean and mountain view estate embodies Montecito’s signature blend of casual sophistication, outdoor living, and effortless style. An epicurean kitchen features professional appliances and is perfect for all culinary adventures. An expansive first floor primary suite features a boutique-worthy closet and spa-like bath. In addition to the other trio of bedrooms, upstairs, the ocean view media room easily converts to a second primary suite while the lower level hosts a wine cellar. A pool, outdoor kitchen, firepits, bocce court, lush lawns, ancient oak trees, and a movie theater blend beautifully to create what can only be defined as land magic. A charming guest house overlooks the rose garden and offers flexible space for visitors, working from home, staff, or an epic play structure. A second barbeque and firepit create lovely, autonomous outdoor spaces for visitors. A detached garage features two auto bays as well as a beautiful gym with storage, designer lighting, heat/air conditioning, and refrigeration. Grounded in history but with an eye towards the future, this incredible estate stands ready for a new steward, and is located in the coveted Montecito Union School District.

photo by Blake Bronstad

Listed for $14,995,000 by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties. photo by Jason Rick

photo by Blake Bronstad

RIVIERA LIVING BY DESIGN

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