A Collecting Couple Look to Long-Time Collaborator Lee F. Mindel to Orchestrate Their California Estate

ith its affable climate and mountainous seaside topography, Northern California’s Marin County has long been a magnet for captains of industry who come to build slope-hugging retreats that strike a Mediterranean chord. Likewise, when a prominent San Francisco–based couple came across a Marin property with sweeping views of Mount Tamalpais a few years ago, it put them in mind of Italy’s ancient hill towns.

But the 2001 Italianate Revival compound already occupying the site was more kitsch than classic. The main house, an awkward warren of rooms huddled around an interior tented dining hall, didn’t suit a highly cultured couple with an important art collection, an ardent interest in gardens and landscape, and influential positions on the boards of leading arts, educational, and philanthropic institutions.

“The house was architecturally incoherent,” the wife says. It also lacked adequate space to accommodate visits from their five children, some of whom were starting families of their own.

To help redress these shortcomings, the couple called on Lee F. Mindel, their architect and designer of choice for almost 25 years, to reimagine the residence with the intellectual adventurousness and rigorous elegance that define his practice. The three have developed a mutually enriching working relationship fueled by a steady exchange of ideas and a warm friendship to match.

“I wish I could be adopted by them,” says the architect, only half joking. “I am always learning from them.” In transforming the compound—which includes the main house, a guesthouse, a pool house, and a freestanding garage—Mindel took the buildings in a classically restrained direction. For starters, he refinished the exteriors in a smooth stucco tinted a subtler, softer shade. He also expanded the main house, carving out space in the hillside to almost double the existing square footage. The exacting state and local zoning and environmental code requirements were, Mindel says, “some of the most complex I’ve ever dealt with.”

The revitalized estate now nestles into a landscape updated by landscape architect Andrea Cochran, with a profusion of roses, jasmine, and dahlias facing the pool and a view of Mount Tamalpais. At the back of the house, a terraced sculpture garden fortified by handsomely striated rammed-earth retaining walls serves as a “jewellike setting,” the wife says, for arresting outdoor works by artists such as Larry Bell, Yinka Shonibare, Antony Gormley, and Simone Leigh.

To create a more impactful entry and enhance circulation, Mindel redesigned the rounded tower, transforming it into a cylindrical three-story rotunda, with clerestory windows and a graceful inverted dome at the top, as well as inserting a spiral staircase that descends to a new, lower level. “The rotunda acts as a focal point and a hinge,” says the architect, who notes that the house is informed by “life imitating art and art imitating life.”

Encircling the tower’s topmost level is a panoramic installation of The Metaphysical Room by Italian Surrealist Piero Fornasetti. Executed in 1958, it pays homage to Giovanni Battista Piranesi and M. C. Escher with intricate, off-kilter trompe l’oeil renditions of windows, ladders, staircases, and doorways. More than 50 feet long, its 32 panels had most recently spanned several walls in the New York City apartment of two other longtime Mindel clients, Sting and Trudie Styler.

The rotunda “became a beautiful, poetic centerpiece,” says the wife. “My original thought was to find a work of art to suspend from the oculus ceiling.” Instead, the couple installed a roughly 15-foot-high, marble-and-bronze tree sculpture by Giuseppe Penone on the lower level, so that its branches project upward through the middle of the staircase. “This place is about art indoors and out,” Mindel says.

Extending the rotunda’s muted palette into the high-ceilinged living spaces beyond, Mindel foregrounded the couple’s discerning collections of art and design. In the free-flowing area that contains the family room and dining area, a majestic Sam Gilliam painting converses with dynamic works by Firelei Báez and Igshaan Adams, as a colorfully postmodern Robert Venturi Chippendale chair holds its own against a pair of Alvar Aalto lounge chairs. In the vaulted living room, a powerful Charline von Heyl canvas hung above the black marble fireplace and flanked by vintage chairs by Preben Fabricius and Jørgen Kastholm contrast the signature blue of an Yves Klein cocktail table.

In a nod to the clients’ Scandinavian heritage, design pieces by Aalto, Gunnar Asplund, Eero Saarinen, and Arnold Madsen contribute to the luminous, understated atmosphere, as do antique Swedish rugs layered on top of monochromatic carpeting.

The homeowners entertain in a variety of ways, but when they’re hosting their close-knit family, they prize informality, whether gathering for meals around the Luca Cipelletti dining table in multicolored Hans J. Wegner chairs, relaxing by the pool, or watching movies in the downstairs sitting room, where a monumental David Hockney occupies one of the only two wall panels not discreetly housing Murphy beds. “It’s a dormitory for visiting grandchildren,” clarifies Mindel.

Their grandmother considers every season at the property a delight. But if she had to pick a favorite month, it might be April. “We always have an Easter egg hunt,” she says. Here’s a toss-up: Are the colorful folds of the Shonibare sculpture or the little pockets in the Gormley a better place to hide an egg?

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2026 Summer Issue under the headline “Higher Order.” Subscribe to the magazine.