Through the Fire

After a catastrophic blaze, an art collector couple taps Jamie Bush to design a home that is built to last.

- Camille Okhio

In a ruggedly picturesque hilltop abutting the Los Padres National Forest in Montecito, California, stands a home that's a monument to self-sufficiency. But it wasn't always that way. The owners, a worldly husband and wife with a passion for collecting art, had made peace with their middling Spanish Mediterranean-style house when the devastating Thomas Fire of 2017 tore through the property and forced a new beginning.

The couple had intended to rebuild their previous home as it was when designer and architect Jamie Bush came on board, pushing them to consider a different direction entirely. To accommodate building laws, Bush suggested a house with the exact same footprint but pared back, with hyper functional interior architecture. It would be constructed, with the help of architecture firm Shubin Donaldson, from hard-wearing materials, most notably fire-resistant standing seam metal cladding on the exterior. "We wanted to heed the lessons of nature by collaborating with the environment and our immediate surroundings," the wife says.