[imagesource: Douglas Friedman / AD]
The last time we heard from the That ’70s Show sweethearts, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, was when they live-trolled a tabloid magazine with a cheeky video.
Now, they have a fully built farmhouse-inspired home in Beverly Hills, rugged and ready for life with their two children.
I guess this makes them the American equivalent of the ultra-high-net-worth Brits who are taking their appreciation for nature to the next level by buying country estates with their lockdown cash.
The Kutcher/Kunis property, or KuKu Farms as they’ve called it, is six acres along a hilltop and looks like an old barn that had an affair with a French Neoclassical mansion.
Architectural Digest magazine made KuKu Farms the cover story of their June issue, delving into the design process behind what Kunis and Kutcher describe as a “home, not an estate”.
The property accommodates a main house connected to a guesthouse/entertainment barn, as well as a freestanding barbecue pavilion.
Of course, there’s a delicious pool on the property, too:
Kutcher describes what they were aiming for when the couple started putting Pinterest boards together:
“We wanted the house to look like an old barn, something that had been here for decades, that was then converted into a house. But it also had to feel modern and relevant.”
The couple didn’t manage to find an old farmhouse to restore, so instead, they built one from scratch, and the project took them a whole five years:
“Building a house from the ground up is no small thing,” Kunis is quoted as saying. “This was either going to make us or break us.”
…renowned for his ability to coax a sense of poetry and a bright, contemporary spirit from distilled vernacular forms and rustic materials.
Perfect for the visual language and architectural vocabulary is Vicky Charles, who was hired for her interior design skills just as she was about to leave a post as head of design at the exclusive members club, Soho House:
“We loved the way she mixed fabrics, patterns, textures—really her whole aesthetic,” Kunis said.
It’s also built with sustainability in mind, with a well on the property (that the family dug themselves) to irrigate the land, as well as a field of corn (planted and harvested during the COVID-19 lockdown by the family).
The sustainability aspect is woven in at every possible juncture, powered by photovoltaics and a solar array that produces significantly more power than the property requires:
“Ashton and Mila are concerned about the quality of the soil, the purity of the food they eat and the water they drink. The ideals of sustainability and regenerative farming aren’t just abstract concepts to them,” Backen says.
Although, it’s definitely a bit fancier than anything Beverly Hillbilly-ish, as the home has been spruced up with a 10-foot-tall crystal chandelier and a set of custom-made silver thrones that Kutcher commissioned while on a trip to India.
“We thought it would be funny to have this incredibly opulent thing hanging in a barn. It kind of takes the piss out of the property,” Kunis says of the crystal chandelier.
Now, their home is their sanctuary in a world full of chaos:
“To feel tranquility in a space, everything needs to be in order,” Kutcher concludes.
“If the world around you isn’t in order, it’s hard to get your brain in order. When we’re in our home, the world just makes sense.”
Must be nice.
[source:architecturaldigest]
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