Great things take time to develop. The secondary home in Montecito, California, planned and completed over a period of a decade by of Los Angeles-based architect William Hefner and his late wife, interior designer Kazuko Hoshino, is a perfect example of this.

The extended design and construction period allowed the ideas to mature, unexpected methods and materials to present themselves, and the decisions to gel for both. Eventually, the long incubation time resulted in a relaxed holiday retreat that feels both new and old, both modern and traditional.

It is not a house but a compound, a set of low wood and stone buildings rather than one sprawling house or a multi-story structure. In some cultures, compound-living is a cherished tradition that gives different generations or branches of a larger family both together-time and privacy. In others, having separate functions of a household in separate buildings is a long-held tradition (put the link of the masseria post here, when you have it ).
In the case of the Romero Canyon compound the process began in 2008 when Hefner and Hoshino bought an overgrown one-acre parcel of land in the lush Romero Canyon area of Montecito. The site had a 900-square-foot (84 sq.metre) 1930s shack and even older stables that had been converted into a guest house.

Busy with their growing architecture and design practice Studio William Hefner in Los Angeles during the recession, California-born Hefner and Japan-born Hoshino, who was pregnant w...