Florestal – Main House — Appleton Partners LLP

Restoring the 1920s Santa Barbara, California estate Florestal was far more than an architectural project for Marc Appleton, AIA, the founding principal of Appleton Partners LLP. 

This residence represents a labor of love that had a great influence on his personal life and professional work. For the firm, the project highlights a collaboration with a long-term client with whom Managing Partner Ken Mineau, AIA and Appleton have designed several homes over the years. 

In 1925, Appleton’s maternal grandparents, Peter Cooper Bryce and Angelica Schuyler Bryce, built the house that was designed by Santa Barbara architect George Washington Smith, a master of the Spanish Revival style whose works in the area include Casa del Herrero, the Lobero Theater and the Santa Barbara News-Press building.  

As a boy, Appleton, his siblings and his mother made frequent visits to the oceanside estate.

The original 13,000-square-foot home Smith designed for the Bryces presided over 52 acres and was arranged around a trio of interior courtyards. A funicular and a beach cabana below, designed by architect Mary Craig, were added later.

Angelica took particular interest in the home’s design, traveling to Spain and Europe to get ideas, purchase doors and fixtures and making detailed drawings of elements that she wanted Smith to include.  

When the Bryces owned Florestal, whose name in Portuguese means sylvan, the grounds had become a showplace. 

Angelica, a longtime member and president of the Santa Barbara Garden Club, cultivated the plantings over 50 years and often shared her horticultural oasis with friends, neighbors and visitors.

After Peter died in 1964 and Angelica died in 1980, the property was sold in probate, an event that Appleton and his family could not halt, and it then barely escaped the wrecking ball. 

During the years afterward, parts of the house were demolished, original details and finishes were removed, the landscaping was almost destroyed and inappropriate additions that altered its appearance were attached.

In 2005, a new owner, a longtime client of Appleton Partners, bought the property. Appleton and his team, which included Mineau and Frank Berzai, were called upon to restore the home to its former glory.

“Understanding and applying the architectural design principles utilized by the original architect within a structure that had been significantly altered by subsequent owners and meeting current-day living standards for function, color, and technology were the main challenge,” Appleton says.

In their plans, the architectural team paid heed to two of Smith’s signature features: the use of intentional asymmetries and punctuated light–to guide participants to move through spaces–at first obscured, then to other directions. 

“This draws the user to discover unexpected views and experiences,” Appleton says. 

From the entry court, for example, one would expect to enter a bilaterally symmetrical floor plan through the front doors into a grand enfilade arrangement of openings, courtyards or a great room.  

“Instead,” Appleton says, “one is met with a wall just nine feet away. This creates an opportunity to redirect the viewer to glimpses of the ocean and other significant features.”

This strategy of obscured views opening to new ones was employed throughout the adjacent courtyard rooms and informed the restoration of the original plan and the new additions.

The final design guides inhabitants from the indoors to the outdoors, defined by varied scaled rooms framing views of the site. In so doing, the experience of moving in and out, around the rooms and through the landscape, enhances the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of Santa Barbara.

The new additions, one for the primary suite and one for the new kitchen, family room, and children’s wing, follow the planning concept of separating the new from the original, by using courtyards. Connected to the main house via breezeways, they total 8,000 square feet. 

The owners, Appleton says, insisted on a faithful restoration of the original house and wanted to recreate a consistent whole, where the lines between old and new are not legible.

The new gardens have been laid out with classical axial views designed to restore a landscape worthy of the original estate. This includes extensive rose gardens and pergolas that frame the ocean views.

Appleton says he feels honored to bring Florestal back to life for the new owners, who care about it and its history as much as he does.  

“It’s a brand-new restoration but looking very much like the Smith house of 1930 when my grandparents lived there,” he says. “With age and care, like the original, it will acquire a patina and hopefully will stay in the same family’s hands for generations.” TB