Barbara Bestor Re-Invents The Ranch, $5.8M

Philip Ferrato January 28, 2023

Architect Barbara Bestor has built a career elevating the mundane tropes of California’s Mid-century design into wonderfully livable spaces, whether in new construction or renovation and/or remodels, and her firm, Bestor Architecture’s deeply inventive post-postmodern design language links the recent past with the present, creating welcoming, deeply satisfying and evocative environments.

In Studio City, Bestor took on a ramshackle 1940s Ranch-style home—elevated on a large, mostly flat lot—creating a compound for John Dolan, the television commercial director, and Sarah Lambert, the pastry chef, teacher and recipe developer and their two sons. The 4-bed, 3.5-bath main home is complemented by a guest house with a full kitchen, plus a pool house, all of which encompass wide-ranging views.

Tori Horwitz, the listing agent notes, “It is so rare to find a hideaway, designed by an iconic living California architect, far from the crowds but minutes to everything, where you can gather with friends and family and watch the sun rise and set and count the stars, play on the lawn, converse around the multiple fire pits, splash in the pool on a summer night as the city sparkles below, cook al fresco while warm breezes waft through the living room and kitchen—It’s the dream. This house has a surreal quality that seems too good to be true but it’s not. It is everything.”

What We Love: Beyond the exquisitely comfortable spaces, the now-mature landscaping by Judy Kameon of Elysian Landscapes and interiors by DISC Interiors.