Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher by Douglas Friedman for Architectural Digest June 2021

There’s surely some Beverly Hillbillies quip that pertains to the home that actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have built on a glorious hilltop site perched above the storied Los Angeles enclave. After all, the high-powered Hollywood transplants—he’s from Iowa; she was born in Ukraine—dug a well on the property to irrigate the land, planted (and harvested) a field of corn during the COVID lockdown, and dubbed the place KuKu Farms. But while Jed, Granny, and the rest of the Clampetts embraced a far more traditional take on Beverly Hills splendor—the sprawling French Neoclassical mansion pictured in the series credits was designed by architect Sumner Spaulding in the early 1930s and renovated by the legendary designer Henri Samuel in the 1980s—Kutcher and Kunis approached their passion project from a decidedly more modest perspective.
“We wanted a home, not an estate,” Kunis insists, describing the six-acre property that now accommodates a main house connected to a guesthouse/entertainment barn, as well as a freestanding barbecue pavilion, all arrayed along a central axis elaborately plotted to capture the beguiling views from, between, and through the various structures. “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,” Kutcher elaborates.
The design-obsessed duo launched their five-year adventure by assembling independent Pinterest boards to flesh out their personal visions for the project. “Building a house from the ground up is no small thing. This was either going to make us or break us,” Kunis says of the potentially divisive undertaking. Happily, their aesthetic predilections seemed to dovetail neatly. “When we looked at each other’s boards, 90 percent of the images we selected were the same, and most of the houses we pinned were designed by Howard,” Kutcher recalls, referring to architect Howard Backen of the AD100 firm Backen & Gillam Architects.
Backen, of course, is a master of the so-called modern farmhouse, renowned for his ability to coax a sense of poetry and a bright, contemporary spirit from distilled vernacular forms and rustic materials. The Kutcher/Kunis residence is a testament to his alchemical handling of reclaimed wood, board-form concrete, and glass. “Howard is like a great software designer, someone who approaches design as an accentuation of function,” says Kutcher, who has broad experience in technology start-ups. “A software designer wants to get people where they want to be with the fewest clicks. Howard wants to get you where you want to be with the fewest doors and obstacles. He also knows that there are certain places where you want a barrier to mark a threshold and create a little friction,” Kutcher adds.
For his part, Backen returns the compliment. “Ashton and Mila are two of the smartest, most inquisitive people we’ve ever worked with. We talked about everything from beam sizes to the details of the cross bracing to the junctures of the wood planks and concrete. These are not the kinds of conversations we have with every client,” says the architect.