A Farmhouse With An Indoor Zen Garden And Lavastone Kitchen

Certain parts of LA are famed for their French- and Spanish-inspired homes, but this modern LA farmhouse is a refreshing departure from tradition. It’s the culmination of a long-standing partnership between the homeowner and Sheldon Harte, founder of California studio Harte Davis Interior Design. “I have decorated seven houses for this client, a professional woman who likes to entertain, in locations ranging from Malibu to Utah,” he explains. The earlier houses were designed in her favourite Mediterranean Revival style, but this time, she wanted something different. She commissioned architects Landry Design Group to create a contemporary envelope for Harte’s interiors.

​Established in 1987, Richard Landry’s LA studio has created homes for many, including Gisele Bundchen and Mark Wahlberg. In this case, it was asked to design something layered and inviting. “The client found the farmhouse aesthetic appealing for its casual nature, and appreciated its warmth for everyday living, but she also desired a sophisticated palette that would suit her modern art collection,” explains William Mungall, a partner at the firm. Other priorities were an easy sense of flow for large-scale entertaining and light-filled spaces.

​Mungall’s team clad the exterior in rough natural stone and timber for a low-maintenance look that bridges the neighbourhood’s formality with more modern elements. Large window walls around the home are set in thin steel frames to minimise the sense of separation from the outdoors; a skylight runs the entire length of the entrance hall, flooding the interior with sunshine. “To maintain a casual feel, the massing is broken into multiple volumes with zinc-clad gabled roofs,” adds Mungall. “Large trees were introduced to further soften the exterior and create ‘outdoor rooms’ in the garden.”

Harte collaborated with the architects to extend the organic material palette indoors, ensuring that the interior aligns perfectly with the façade. The homeowner had already come to him with a “surprisingly modern” colour scheme of grey, taupe and black. “It was totally different from what she had been living with for so long,” he says. “She wanted more contemporary furnishings, more sensual surfaces and lots of textures.” Having worked with the client for 20 years, he knew exactly how to interpret her vision, adding hints of gold, silver and bronze to the decorating scheme and leaning into strong surface contrasts. “We used light colours against dark, and smooth finishes against textured,” he explains. “The juxtaposition of jagged stone walls and smooth wood we call ‘finish friction’, because it stops a space from feeling slick.”

​No surface is omitted in this exploration of textures. Rugged limestone floors are interlaced with reclaimed French oak floorboards, notably in the kitchen and family room, which flow onto a covered patio (the homeowner hosts gatherings of one hundred people or more, and the wood is tough enough to withstand heavy traffic). The rough-meets-luxe kitchen combines scrubbed-oak cabinetry with brass detailing, lavastone counters and an island in ebonised oak and limestone. The openwork brass screen that wraps around the staircase was designed to allow light to filter down from the skylight, but also to define the living room. “The metal slats were inspired by the effect of light coming in through the wooden walls of an old barn,” adds Mungall.​

Fireplaces and ceilings presented more opportunities for eye-catching effects. Harte loves to use wallcoverings on ceilings, and chose a grid-patterned Phillip Jeffries design to enliven the study. The TV and games room features an industrial-style concrete ceiling, and the lofty pitched roof of the principal bedroom is clad in reclaimed oak. In the dining room, Harte transformed a partial wall into a sculptural fireplace in cold-rolled steel and petrified wood. “Bespoke seems to be the buzzword of the 21st century,” he says. “Clients love it when something one-of-a-kind has been created just for them.”

​Harte commissioned many custom pieces for the home, including the olivewood dining table with honeycomb brass base, the serpentine chandelier that hangs above it and the A. Rudin sectional sofa in the family room, which is upholstered in charcoal alpaca. The latter is a design trick to make a huge space feel more intimate and approachable. “The dark colour diminishes its size and gives it weight,” explains the designer. Similar techniques are deployed in the principal bedroom, where a faux-shagreen room divider with a built-in glass fireplace breaks up the cavernous space, and its en-suite bathroom, where soaring oak-panelled walls are grounded with sections of silver Cristallo quartzite.

​The client’s prestigious art collection is intelligently displayed, both indoors and out. A Zen-style indoor garden looks out towards a sculpture garden (one of a series of outdoor experiences that also includes a pool cabana, gym and spa). Paintings by Jeff Koons (in the principal bedroom) and Xu Chen (in the dining room) are among the LA farmhouse's few flashes of bright colour, and all the more powerful for that. “The art bursts off the walls,” says Harte. “I’ve never had any desire for a signature look – to me, every project is an opportunity to create a space that doesn’t look like anything we’ve done before.”