Pool Design at the Craig Ellwood Bryon Lamar Johnson House (1953)

June Street Architecture was engaged to design and construct a new pool for the 1953 Bryon Lamar Johnson House, one of Craig Ellwood’s earliest steel hillside residences and a defining work of postwar California modernism. Perched above Crestwood Hills, the house extends from its steep site on a disciplined grid of slender steel columns and timber beams, with a continuous wall of glass opening toward the Pacific and the city basin.

From the outset, the process was collaborative, shaped by close dialogue with the client and a shared commitment to honoring Ellwood’s original vision. The goal was to create a pool that would feel inevitable to the house: quiet, precise, and fully integrated with the structural logic of the architecture.

June Street Architecture approached the pool as an extension of Ellwood’s language into the landscape. Its proportions and alignments were carefully studied to reinforce the geometry of the house and its restrained palette of steel, glass, and concrete.

The water plane serves as a horizontal counterpoint to the structure, calm, reflective, and exacting. It gathers light and sky, amplifies the transparency of the glass front, and deepens the relationship between the house and its site. Sightlines from the primary living spaces were considered with equal care, allowing water, horizon, and city basin to read as a continuous field.

Rather than standing apart as an added feature, the pool continues the architectural logic of the original house. Through alignment, proportion, and material restraint, it reinforces the principles of lightness, openness, and seamless indoor-outdoor living that define California modernism.

With a beautiful Monterey Colonial-style home in Ojai designed by Austin Pierpoint, the clients charged the June Street Architecture and Kay Kollar design team with making the property a perfect retreat for their large family of four grown children and several grandchildren. The design team transformed two auxiliary structures into elegantly appointed and functional guest accommodations.

Originally agricultural outbuildings, the two structures were reimagined to complement—rather than mimic—the historic main house. Their updated architectural detailing and finishes give them a distinct voice that supports the overall character of the site without competing with its legacy.

The two-story guest cottage includes a cheerful family room with a custom sofa that sleeps four, a cozy bedroom, and a glass-walled bathroom filled with light. The upstairs loft, accessed by a newly reworked stair, sleeps eight in four built-in bunk beds.

The garage suite provides a sophisticated bedroom for parents, a nursery for the youngest generation, and a bathroom with a fully glazed indoor/outdoor shower opening into a private garden.

Views of the Topatopa Mountains and the on-site lavender field shape the experience of each room. A reworked trellis system ties the buildings together while honoring the design lineage of landscape designer Paul Hendershot. Landscape restoration and edible garden work were led by Element Construction and their landscape division, under the direction of Eric Purdue.

Architecture: June Street Architecture

Interior Design: Kay Kollar

Builder & Landscape: Element Construction/Eric Purdue

Photography: Noah Webb

At the High Point of Nichols Canyon, where it crosses Woodrow Wilson, sits a 1920s English Cottage Revival that, from the street, appears as a simple one-story home. But the site’s steep descent reveals much more - layers of opportunity lying in wait.

Originally, the lower levels were undefined: subfloor space, old equipment and forgotten corners. The foundation - 100 years old - had deteriorated. Rather than walk away, our clients made the brave choice to invest in the unseen. A series of new caisson-supported retaining walls now embraces the slope, giving the home a new spine.

With structure in place, we added with care: a modest new volume carved below; a balcony branching off the living room; and a better rhythm of air, light and views threading through the home.

Our interventions were quiet, deferential - designed to let the original house breathe again. A lower deck hovers above the slope, tucked with an endless current pool for active rest.

This is now a home that serves a thriving family - with two young adults, one already in college one on the brink. The house, reinvigorated, welcomes them home - and looks confidently toward the next hundred years.