Tour a Venice Craftsman Compound That “Feels Like a Small Italian Village”

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.

Cedar shake shingles painted in a Benjamin Moore green is at once an homage to and a modern restoration of classic Venice bungalows. The exterior balcony allows for a bird’s-eye view of the multigenerational compound.

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.