This $3M Kendrick Bangs Kellogg Home Comes With an Entire Grove of Avocado Trees

Listed for the first time, the Southern California property has organic curves, 360-degree views, and a lifetime supply of alligator pears.

Location: 10650 Old Castle Road, Valley Center, California

Price: $2,995,000

Year Built: 1991

Architect: Kendrick Bangs Kellogg

Footprint: 4,133 square feet (5 bedrooms, 4 baths)

Lot Size: 40 Acres

From the Agent: "This masterwork by San Diego architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg resides high atop its 40-acre Valley Center parcel, offering 360-degree views through expansive walls of glass. The handcrafted organic architecture and landscape meld together in an array of intimate spaces scaled for everyday living. Inspired to return to their agrarian roots, in 1972 the family purchased a 40-acre plot and planted avocado trees. Designed by the architect in 1984, the home of glass and wood with rock walls sourced from the surrounding property took six years to build. Nestled amongst the avocado grove, the home’s high perch lends itself to breathtaking views of the area through the floor-to-ceiling windows. With five bedrooms and three bathrooms, this home captures some of Kellogg’s most inspired work, blurring the line between nature and home, architecture and sculpture."

The home is currently on the market for the first time in its history.

Photo by Ollie Patterson

Photo by Ollie Patterson

The residence is set in Valley Center, 40 miles north of downtown San Diego.

Photo by Ollie Patterson

See the full story on Dwell.com: This $3M Kendrick Bangs Kellogg Home Comes With an Entire Grove of Avocado Trees
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Modernist Masters Inspired This Australian Home—Which a Father and Son Built by Hand

They referenced postwar designers like Richard Neutra, Robin Boyd, and Craig Ellwood, emphasizing an "honest expression of structure and materiality, clarity, and connection to nature."

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Lorne, Australia

Designer: Keep Studio / @keep___studio

Footprint: 1,700 square feet

Structural Engineer: Grain Structural

Photographer: Alexander William

From the Designer: "Designed for Keep Studio’s codirector, Will, this home presented a rare opportunity: to be designed by Keep Studio, and be built entirely by hand with his father, Tim. This personal process shaped a home that is both cost-conscious and full of character.

"The brief called for a long-term home tailored to a couple who love to cook, entertain, and work from home. The design responds with warm, flexible spaces, dedicated work zones, and strong connections to the outdoors. Influenced by postwar modernists like Robin Boyd, Craig Ellwood, and Richard Neutra, the home prioritizes honest expression of structure and materiality, clarity, and connection to nature. Elevated on steel posts, the structure avoided a costly excavation and ensures the home touches the earth lightly. Exposed beams, columns, and cross-bracing met with glazing give a clear structural logic and lightness to the project.

"The project deviates from the rectilinear postwar language with the introduction of a series of functional curves, which in the living spaces strategically smooth junction, conceal storage and other messy items. In the kitchen curves soften what would otherwise have been sharp harsh edges, giving the house an overall organic vibe.

"Materials throughout the project were selected with a strong focus on resource efficiency. The cladding was designed to align with standard cement sheet dimensions, eliminating waste from off-cuts. This logic extended across the build, with spaces planned around standard material modules to reduce excess."

Photo by Alexander William

Photo by Alexander William

Photo by Alexander William

See the full story on Dwell.com: Modernist Masters Inspired This Australian Home—Which a Father and Son Built by Hand

Your Challenge for Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year, Should You Choose to Accept It

Cloud Dancer might miss the mark, but makes space for the kind of creativity the next 25 years could really use.

Since 1999, every year in December, Pantone has elevated a color meant as more than just a swatch for your design library. The institute’s pick aspires to be a resolution for the new year, but its messaging is sometimes splotchy. Last year, Mocha Mousse, a quite-luxury-coded brown, was "underpinned by our desires for everyday pleasures," read the press release, and asked us to lean into the aspirational and luxe. But this bid for indulgence felt askew with what followed in the official materials, that brown also comes from nature, a not very not luxe place. In 2024, the pinky-orange Peach Fuzz emphasized a desire for a year full of sharing, community, and togetherness before mentioning we might also consider using it to "find peace from within."

The messaging around Pantone’s 2026 pick, Cloud Dancer, is similarly pulling us in different directions. The stark white shade promises to turn a space into a "refuge of visual cleanliness that inspires well-being and lightness," says the marketing materials. But Laurie Pressman, the institute’s vice president, also equates it to a "blank canvas," which can be a formidable prospect, as any creative who’s suffered the weight of making their first mark on a metaphorical page knows.

This year, the institute’s face-value messaging isn’t the issue so much as the choice in color, with a salvo of criticism coming largely from outside the house of home design. Some of it is gentle ribbing—my hair stylist wanted to know, were we really going to bring back frosted tips?—while others on the internet are throwing elbows, decrying the elevation of whiteness as an alignment with the perceived eugenics messaging of Sydney Sweeney’s maligned American Eagle ad. Others are going so far as to say it undergirds white supremacy. (Donald Trump, for one, could use truckloads of Cloud Dancer, having recently mentioned he wanted to freshen up the Eisenhower building in Washington, D.C., by washing the granite building completely white.)

"Pantonedeaf" is at least one phrase being thrown around to describe the pick. Dwell’s audience editor, Nicole Nimri, called it a recession indicator—up in the clouds, the markets can only go one way. Senior guides editor Megan Reynolds said Cloud Dancer sounds like a really bad weed strain—nobody should be that high. The Instagram account for the tabloid Weekly World News called the hue the "The Landlord Special," poking at the nation’s painfully high housing costs and puncturing any airs of sophistication Pantone may have hoped to put on. To me, the name alone is jazz hands, the stuff of cloying theater kids. It’s difficult not to read it as Cloud Daaaaaancer, in the voice of Brandon Flowers, a white Mormon man whose cultural relevance peaked in 2007, which only puts the choice further out of touch with the moment. (And that’s coming from a forever fan of the Killers.)

Pantone chose Cloud Dancer, a stark white, as its 2026 Color of the Year.

Courtesy of Pantone

Brands and designers are faring no better at what to do with it. At Dwell, an avalanche of pitches is burying our inboxes with icy-white bouclé throw pillows, snoozy subway tile, and even a Cloud Dancer edition of Play-Doh, which should be banished along with 2022’s "sad beige" trend as one of the more soulless and uninspiring things I can imagine my toddler playing with. Some are offering advice on how to incorporate white into our homes—about as useful as a tutorial on drinking water. The whiteout it all amounts to recalls Kim and the artist formerly known as Kanye’s Axel Vervoordt–designed Hidden Hills, California, manse: heaven for some, a psychiatric ward for the rest of us.

When I asked Sami Reiss, who covers covetable furniture for Dwell and with his newsletter, Snake, for a good example of white furniture (I had to ask, as there was none in my inbox, and especially not from Joybird, the millennial-coded home decor brand owned by La-Z-Boy that announced three milquetoast pieces in the official Cloud Dancer colorway), he said "it all comes back to the Royère Polar Bear, no?" This, of course, is Jean Royère’s 1947 sofa, a plush, swooping settee that might be as close as one can get to luxuriating in the ether. "These things are cloud-shaped, puffy, soft," he continued, adding that, actually, the return of Royère’s wispy white furniture can be traced back to Kim K. "I think about [her] having one a decade ago or so, and how it brought everything in that style to the forefront." Ye once actually tweeted it was his favorite piece of furniture, at a time when anyone still cared about what he had to say.

Joybird, a home decor brand owned by La-Z-Boy, released a three-piece furniture set in Cloud Dancer, including this Carin sectional.

Courtesy Joybird

The Polar Bear sofa by Jean Royère in 1947 did Cloud Dancer before Cloud Dancer did.

Courtesy of Royère

See the full story on Dwell.com: Your Challenge for Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year, Should You Choose to Accept It
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Mamdani Is Leaving His Small Brooklyn Apartment—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week

Trump finds a new architect for the White House ballroom, Shigeru Ban wins the AIA Gold Medal, and more.

• Zohran Mamdani is trading his small, rent-stabilized Astoria apartment for the 11,000-square-foot Gracie Mansion, a move he says is about safety and keeping all his focus on his affordability agenda. (The New York Times)

• San Francisco is rolling out the Homecoming Project, a "spare-room" housing program started in Alameda in 2018 that pays residents $50 a day to host people recently released from prison for six-month stays. Here’s how it works. (KQED)

• Trump has swapped out his handpicked boutique architect for a veteran D.C. firm after the $300 million White House ballroom supposedly proved too big a project for a small team to handle. The switch follows reports last week that Trump and his architect were sparring over the size of the addition. (The Washington Post)

• A Dallas couple is doubling down on their viral holiday decorations, trading last year’s over-the-top light show for a full-blown "Grinch grotto" packed with inflatable grinches aimed at their haters. The spectacle is drawing plenty of attention, good and bad, from neighbors, gawkers, and city officials. (Chron)

Shigeru Ban has been honored by the AIA for his belief that architecture and humanitarian action are intertwined.

Photo by Samuel de Roman/Getty Images

• Shigeru Ban has won the 2026 AIA Gold Medal in recognition of his work with simple materials used in service of people. Here’s how his disaster relief architecture has reshaped the field’s understanding of sustainability, and the moral obligations of design. (Architect Magazine)

Top photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Once a Mattress Factory, Now a Minimalist Home Seeking $900K

The current owner reimagined the former Melbourne warehouse with a toned-down palette and metal accents that nod to the building’s industrial past.

Location: 8 Brown Street, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia

Auction Price: $1,350,000 - $1,450,000 AUS (approximately $900,000 - $967,000 USD)

Renovation Date: 1995

Renovation Designer: Magenta Burgin

Footprint: 2153 square feet (2 bedrooms, 2 baths)

From the Agent: "In the heart of Collingwood, an industrial warehouse has been transformed into an elegant, light-filled home. For owner Magenta Burgin, the building’s raw, industrial character offered exactly the kind of creative foundation she was looking for. The building at 8 Brown Street sits within Collingwood’s industrial heartland, which was once lined with small factories and textile workshops that anchored the area’s bustling rag trade. The home retains the honest bones of its past, while embracing the refinement that defines the suburb’s new design identity. Working for design-led developer Neometro, Magenta understood the value of good bones and letting materials speak for themselves. As a result, her approach to interiors was instinctive rather than decorative. She stripped the palette back, allowing the building’s structure to set the tone."

The minimalist residence was converted from a mattress factory about 30 years ago. 

Photo by Pier Carthew

The neighborhood was formerly full of small factories and textile workshops, although it has undergone a major revitalization in recent years.

Photo by Pier Carthew

Photo by Pier Carthew

See the full story on Dwell.com: Once a Mattress Factory, Now a Minimalist Home Seeking $900K
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Water Surrounds This $924K Nova Scotia Home on Three Sides

Designed by Brian MacKay-Lyons, the property includes a guesthouse, a hot tub, and a prime position on the tip of a peninsula.

Location: 120 Net Yard Lane, Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia, Canada

Price: $1,275,000 CAD (approximately $924,056 USD)

Year Built: 2016

Architect: Brian MacKay-Lyons

Footprint: 1,685 square feet (2 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 0.22 Acres

From the Agent: "Point House is a rare offering by internationally acclaimed architect Brian MacKay-Lyons. Surrounded by Atlantic waters on three sides, Point House transcends conventional coastal living through its marriage of Nova Scotian vernacular and contemporary minimalism. Eastern white cedar shingles and steep gabled rooflines honor Nova Scotia’s architectural heritage while floor-to-ceiling glass walls dissolve boundaries between interior and exterior spaces. The double-height great room is punctuated by blackened steel totemic elements and anchored by a monumental hearth. A sculptural steel ribbon staircase—equal parts function and art—ascends to the loft retreat, a private sanctuary suspended above. The two-story companion bunkie—with pivoting walls—seamlessly merges interior comfort with the tranquility of the exterior tidal pond. An infinity hot tub at the water’s edge completes this coastal sanctuary, where sunrise and sunset paint daily masterpieces across the sky. Steps from Hirtle’s Beach and Gaff Point trails, this award-winning property offers unparalleled natural beauty."

Photo by Chris J. Dickson of Oneiric Media

A Stûv woodburning warms the living room.

Photo by Noah James of Noah James Media

Photo by Chris J. Dickson of Oneiric Media

See the full story on Dwell.com: Water Surrounds This $924K Nova Scotia Home on Three Sides
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Snazzy Gifts for the Design Lover That You’ll Want to Keep for Yourself

From a fuzzy blanket to a pill container too pretty to hide, these presents are great for other people, but maybe best just for you.

Welcome to Someone Buy This!, a monthly shopping column featuring the fun, the frivolous, and the practical from a very discerning shopper.

Finding the perfect gift can feel like a full-time job. As a chronic shopper, I’ve spent all year hunting for things that are thoughtful and a little extra. My goal is to help you impress your friends, family and even yourself (because, yes, self-gifting counts!). Here are my favorite gifts for the people you love and yourself.

A special candle

Dumae Joy Candle

The Joy Candle is defined by architectural edges that gracefully curve and embrace, creating a sculptural form that makes a true statement in any space.

This is my scented Candle Of The Year. The scent is vaguely floral and sandalwood-y. It’s a warm scent that isn’t really tied to a specific season. I burned this daily from the moment it arrived until the wax got dangerously low, saving the "last burn" for an upcoming Christmas Eve dinner party. Yes, I’m sad it’s almost gone, but I’m just as excited for the empty vessel, which will now live by my entryway holding keys like a little trophy. This is more than I would usually spend on a candle but between the incredible scent and sculptural vessel, this candle is well worth it.

The chicest pill container

Remsen Pill Container

This pill container combines minimalist beauty with mindful functionality. Die-cast aluminum lid with integrated mirrored surface. Magnetic closure for secure storage. Dimensions: 6-¾" L x 1-⅜" H

A pill container would normally not be considered a very nice gift but this one from Remsen breaks all the rules. I got this as a gift last year and absolutely love it. I was cycling through plastic containers that I’d end up chucking in a drawer and forgetting about. Not ideal for daily meds and vitamins! I love the size, heft, and shine of this container. It’s super easy to use and looks good enough to display—the Rolex of pill containers.

Spoons for those who need their java

Shell Espresso Spoons

Hand carved & cast in solid brass mimicking the treasures found onboard a sunken ship within the depths of the sea. The spoon duo for your morning espresso!

These brass espresso spoons are a great gift for any coffee lover. My one gripe is that they’re not dishwasher-friendly, so make sure you’re sharing this info with the lucky recipient. They’re so pretty that no one will complain. Or if they do, just remind them they now own spoons worthy of a fancy hotel breakfast.

Italian dinner plates with little fishies 

Tommaso Dinner Plates

All the way from the Amalfi Coast to your table, these dinner plates bring the heat and joy of summer with effortless charm and a flash of color. Each one is hand-painted with a spirited little sardine, swimming proudly as part of the school—carrying the cheerful message that more is, indeed, merrier.

These plates are technically a great gift, but let’s be real: they’re the type of thing you end up keeping for yourself. Each plate is hand-painted in Tommaso’s studio in Italy. They’re all slightly different and special. This is a great gift for a lucky friend…or a lucky you. No one will blame you for keeping them. (If you’re in Brooklyn, go see the full set in person at Porta.)

An almost-DIY candleholder

Lichen NYC Galvanized Wall Candle Holder

This wall mounted candle holder is inspired from left over components from our wall sconces. Please be careful of sharp edges when folding or handling. 7"H x 4.5"W x 3"D

I got this as a gift for my [REDACTED] and I’m so excited for them to unwrap it. I love the drama of this candleholder! It arrives flat so you can shape it to your needs. While it’s pictured with a regular jarred candle, you can burn any pillar candle that’s under three inches in diameter. Pair this gift with a funky pillar candle like this one.

A little coupe for you

Soos Atelier Shiloh Olive Coupe

Crafted for elegance and designed to impress. Made from 304 food-grade stainless steel. Dishwasher safe.

This coupe is meant for olives but has endless uses. It can be used to stash trinkets, rings, candies, or whatever other small-scale items you choose. It’s dishwasher safe and made of food-grade stainless steel. The unique design and low price point makes this the perfect White Elephant gift that will be "stolen" over and over again.

A cozy blanket

Ultra Soft Faux Fur Blanket

Experience a new level of softness and comfort with our Sculpted Faux Fur Blanket. The luxurious throw blanket is crafted from a combination of 700GSM plush faux fur fabric and 220 GSM crystal velvet - it offers a sumptuous and soft feel that you'll love to snuggle into.

I tried this blanket at an Airbnb last month and bought it immediately. I’m usually not drawn to fleece or faux-fur, but this blanket is so cozy and soft I couldn’t resist. My dog also approved, instantly staking his claim when I unboxed it. He sheds like crazy, but the tight weave makes lint rolling easy. It’s also very easy to wash and dry at home, no trips to the dry cleaner required. I was thrilled to find out it comes out of the dryer just as soft and fluffy as the day it arrived. 

We love the products we feature and hope you do, too. If you buy something through a link on the site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Looking for something else? Check out the rest of our holiday gift guides here.

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My Search for Furniture I’ll Keep Forever

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