House Tour: At home outside

A California couple renovate a trio of vintage cottages as a singular home where the rooms are linked by garden paths instead of hallways, and nature is always close at hand

- FRED ALBERT

If the whole point of having a vacation house is to escape your everyday life, why choose one that looks just like the place where you normally live?

That was the reasoning that drove Alan and Pam Grossbard to acquire a quirky, run-down compound in Montecito, California, a coastal enclave poised between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean less than an hour and a half from their home in Los Angeles. Hidden behind a hedge on a narrow lane, the scruffy lot measured just under half an acre and included a trio of Spanish-style buildings, the earliest said to have been built around 1930. Structurally sound, the modest main house, studio, and garage were clearly suffering from neglect, and bore traces of their years as a purported hippie hangout in the 1960s.

"It was in some disrepair and a bit overgrown, but there was something charming about it," Pam recalls of the property. "Like if you pulled back the layers, you would find something interesting."

Since the compound no longer conformed to building codes, the Grossbards' options were limited. "If we took the buildings down, we could only build a single-family house," says Alan. "We thought, Why create what we already have? Let's do something completely different." Set on saving the original structures, they sought guidance from Kenneth Mineau, Paul Rubison, and Marc Appleton of Appleton Partners in neighboring Santa Barbara. After visiting the site, the architects proposed a novel approach: Why not think of the entire property as the house, and the individual buildings as rooms within it? The firm had employed a similar tactic in its restoration of San Ysidro Ranch, a nearby resort the Grossbards admired, so the couple gave the concept their blessing. "We were ready to take on a project, and seeing something like this that needed so much help really piqued our interest," says Pam, who, like her husband, works in the entertainment business.