Montecito Style
Firooz Zahedi
The seaside town of Montecito is often overshadowed by its neighbor Santa Barbara — which is generally how its residents like it. Though home and refuge to numerous celebrities, Montecito’s intentional cultivation of a low-key profile has allowed for a unique community to emerge, and with it, a multifaceted interior and garden design culture.
Montecito Style: Paradise on California’s Gold Coast is the first book to present twenty houses and landscapes in an eclectic range of styles and rich architectural legacy that coalesce into a quintessential "California style."
The residences featured in this book reflect the diversity of design that has defined California living for more than a century: early standard-setters by George Washington Smith and an Andalusian-style abode by his protégé (and Santa Barbara’s first licensed female architect) Lutah Maria Riggs, Beaux-Arts mansions, converted carriage houses, nouveau palazzi, low-slung midcentury modern abodes, an iconic concrete-and-glass house from the 1970s, and even a studio apartment above a garage.