When tech entrepreneurs Julia DeWahl and Daniel Romero moved their young family from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the couple gravitated toward Venice. Enchanted by the neighborhood’s iconic Craftsman bungalows, the romance of oceanside foggy mornings, as well as the neighborhood’s evolving “Silicon Beach” identity, they acquired a compound with four separate structures spread across two adjacent lots. The 1920s bungalows offered the perfect canvas for a thoughtful revival—one that would honor the neighborhood’s storied past while creating a fresh, modern sanctuary for multiple generations.

“Bungalows felt very grounding and familiar to us,” says DeWahl who, like her husband, grew up on the East Coast. “While we appreciate modern homes, we were nostalgic for something more traditional and cozier.” Wanting to push boundaries with unexpected choices that reflect a creative spirit, they hired the AD PRO Directory architecture and design firm Electric Bowery.

Known for a robust hospitality and residential practice that focuses on materiality and the philosophy “design for a well-lived life,” Electric Bowery was founded in 2013 by Lucia Bartholomew and Cayley Lambur, who met while working as architects for Frank Gehry. “Our plan was to create a coastal seaside compound and take the best of the Venice Craftsman design and make it old-world, timeless, a bit more sophisticated, and moodier,” says Bartholomew.

Electric Bowery’s creative director, Stephanie Luk, and design director, Daniella Gohari, also worked on the project; it took the team three years to renovate and design each of the property’s four structures—the main house, the guest house, a treehouse, and an office studio. Campion Walker Landscapes designed connecting paths, created gardens with steel arbors for colorful wisteria and bougainvillea archways, and added in drought tolerant trees as well as fragrant citrus plants, all intended for privacy and a retreat-like setting. The grounds, anchored around a central courtyard, are a year-round refuge for indoor-outdoor living replete with a cedar-shingled snack shack for serving drinks and food poolside.

“We wanted to be a little subversive and whimsical,” Bartholomew says of the bold colors, playful wallpaper, and idiosyncratic, design-forward lighting and furniture. In the main house, espresso brown–stained floors and creamy walls painted in Farrow & Ball’s White Tie produce a serene base to build layers upon. The plum red kitchen has both traditional hub qualities and accommodates the couple’s love of entertaining. The tiled walls give the room a vibrant texture and a large custom-designed island is meant to feel like a handmade old piece of furniture that might have been original to the house.

The chartreuse dining room, featuring a custom dining table and red leather Mario Bellini chairs, also showcases one of the homeowners’ favorite pieces: a Diomoremilano suspension lamp from the Future Perfect that hints at Milanese Art Deco glamour. In both the main house and the guest house, the team worked painstakingly to bring back original Craftsman details by commissioning custom stained-glass windows and restoring original leaded windows. They also created contemporized designs and profiles for cabinetry, casework, and molding.

The south-facing guest house, with its own kitchen and living area, offers bright and warm accommodation for grandparents and friends. Buttery walls allow the colors to pop and brass accents reflect the light. In the bedroom, Bat & Poppy wallpaper by Trustworth Studios is at first glance a flouncy floral but upon closer examination shows off a more artful surprise with its bat motif.

The cedar-shingled treehouse, tucked amidst some bamboo, is a sweet, bright spot on the property, but the 1,000-square-foot studio also serves as a true respite for the homeowners. The interior, covered in custom walnut tongue and groove paneling, is a contemporary riff on an old-world library. A large-scale Noguchi Akari light fixture fills the main room, which grounds the space with circular geometry. A bed nook is the perfect place to curl up for reading or a nap. “It’s our adult, quiet space. We both love to read so it’s full of books,” DeWahl says. “It’s so peaceful and it’s become one of our favorite spaces in the whole house.”

When family and friends spend time outdoors, they can gather around the custom live edge table—which seats 14—and cook in the wood-fired pizza oven, a favorite feature of the alfresco kitchen. Connecting these series of buildings for varied uses allows places for work, play, socialization, and privacy too. Says Bartholomew, “When you spend time on the property, it almost feels like a small Italian village where you can call out to your neighbors across the way.”