FORBES HAVENS
The Billionaire Whisperer: Meet The Interior Designer Who’s Bewitching The A-List
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hen interior designer Joan Behnke brought Bob and Audrey Byers to Paris, one of their first stops was the Grand Palais. The petite, silver-haired Californian marched her new clients, self-made health care multimillionaires, through the great hall’s Monet exhibition, using the painter’s work to engage the couple in a larger discussion about fine art. “You have to bring clients along on a journey,” explains Behnke, a soft-spoken 59-year-old. “It’s about teaching people to appreciate what they are paying for.” Behnke’s work adorns the homes of some of the planet’s wealthiest people. Her clients
pay for six-figure furniture by haute designer Hervé Van der Straeten, weathered antiques pulled from the rickety tables of the Paris Flea Market, rare strains of Carrara marble selected along the steep edges of a Tuscan stone quarry, black lacquered chairs created by artisans in a remote fishing village in Myanmar. More than anything, though, they pay for the stories that come along with these items. Every fixture, every finish, every decoration positioned inside a Behnke-detailed home comes with an adventure attached. The designer insists that her clients personally play a role in the narrative, whether as
Joan Behnke, whose A-plus clients love the process: Every piece tells a story.
ETHAN PINES FOR FORBES
By Morgan Brennan
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Behnke & associates
an integral part of the sourcing or as a Behnke-educated font of information on what is in their homes. And every step of the journey, from igniting an appreciation for fine art to enabling a client to choose her own bespoke light fixtures at a glassmaker’s studio, contributes to the Behnke brand. It’s an investigative process that may span years and cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. On a recent day we visited the Byers’ newly finished 23,000-square-foot Richard Landry-designed château overlooking Lake Sherwood in tony Thousand Oaks, Calif. “I don’t want my clients to just own a personalized piece for the home; I want them to experience it,” Behnke stresses, as we stroll through the mansion. Bob Byers eagerly joins the tour, pointing out a restored antique chandelier found at a Paris street market, reclaimed bricks from Bos-
Behnke’s handiwork (clockwise from top left): Alec Gores’ screening room, meant to evoke the luxury of the movies’ golden age; a room for Tom Barrack, a collector of Orientalist paintings; Bob and Audrey Byers brought Tuscany back home to California; an Arab diplomat’s sculptural family room in Washington, D.C.
ton’s Big Dig that march along the domed stairwell ceiling, a silky handwoven fabric from Laos that wallpapers the powder room and sliced bottle bottoms that form a gleaming glass collage on the wall of the wine room. The pièce de résistance: the lush black-and-gold home theater with a glass-paneled strip embedded in the floor to reveal an exotic-car collection in the showroom below. Behnke’s network of high-net-worth clients—or, perhaps more aptly, collaborators—love her for putting them through their paces. “She always makes you feel like you are the contributor, that you are manifesting your own mission,” attests Thomas Barrack, the billionaire founder of Colony Capital and a decadelong client. Despite a college degree that included art history, Behnke first pursued a career in modern dance and put in time working on films.
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Behnke & associates
The Byers’ dining room. Thousand Oaks, California.
Eventually, she scored a job with design maven Erika Brunson. Her first project: helping design the Saudi royal family’s estates in Riyadh and other locales. The gig exposed her to high-luxury vendors and specialized sources across the world, stoking a passion for uncovering unusual items and, once she began her own firm in 1999, a desire to spread that passion to her clients. “I don’t view her as a decorator; she is a cultural scientist,” says Barrack. “She will research little, narrow, unknown tunnels of history on a particular project and then start drilling down. She doesn’t just do research of the period; she has contacts all over the world who help her maneuver through identifying objects and materials.” Behnke first worked on Barrack’s personal residence in Montecito, Calif. When his private equity firm purchased a 36mile swath of Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda, he enlisted her to help his wife, Laurel, transform the coast’s hotels into bastions of high luxury. It meant identifying local artisans to create opulent textiles and furnishings. Today the private villas at the Pitrizza and Romazzino hotels (recently sold to Qatar) fetch more than $25,000 a night during the high season, luring business moguls, oligarchs and royals from across the world. With a client roster that reads like the society pages—or, really, a FORBES list—Joan Behnke & Associates keeps a low profile. Even the office flies below the radar, tucked behind unmarked frosted windows on a nondescript block of West Olympic Boulevard in
Beverly Hills. Still, housing buffs are familiar with her work: It regularly graces the pages of Architectural Digest and Robb Report’s Ultimate Home of the Year issue (her work has snagged three of the past four covers). Behnke’s lack of popular exposure is part of her allure. She caters to an echelon of wealth that values discretion. And she has earned these clients’ trust in part by charging fixed fees (rather than commissions attached to purchased items, like most designers). Maybe the rarest gift of all: As many clients attest, Behnke seems to be refreshingly free of ego. “Many designers have a specific style, and that’s not Joan,” says Richard Manion, a luxury-home architect currently collaborating with Behnke on a 50,000-square-foot “beach house” in Abu Dhabi. “There is no formula. The common thread is that she will give her most personal interpretation of a client’s dreams for a house.” The Abu Dhabi compound, which will blend Eastern and Western aesthetics, is being constructed for a diplomat from an Arab country. Like so many of Behnke’s clients, the ambassador is a return customer, having hired her to renovate a Washington, D.C. abode after experiencing her decor at the ultraexclusive MGM Grand Mansion’s villas in Las Vegas. “I have worked with a lot of people who tell you what they think you should have, and you must push back,” admits the diplomat. “She caters to what the client wants, which is why
she has a lot of happy, satisfied clients with some very different stuff.” Behnke typically juggles about ten projects at a time—she is also currently at work on the 22,000-square-foot interior of quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Giselle Bündchen’s Brentwood mansion, in L.A. Ground-up projects like this can take two to three years on average. And a client had better be ready to learn. “Everybody travels with Joan, and it’s really wonderful because she has this network of people in various places to source exotic materials and furniture,” says Robert Veloz, an aerospace-equipment entrepreneur who enlisted Behnke to remodel his Montecito home after he sold his nearby estate to Oprah Winfrey for $50 million. “You present concept boards,” says Behnke, “and sometimes people glaze over. Then you go through the educational process, and they come to that concept themselves. It becomes so rewarding.” When Behnke whisks me through the front door of Alec Gores’ 40,000-square-foot estate inside the gates of an exclusive Beverly Hills community, the private equity billionaire bounds out to hug her, singing her praises (her projects for the Gores family have included vacation retreats, office buildings, even a private jet). The home spans three floors, with rooms that range from a poker den to a series of masculine home offices to a vast gourmet kitchen made homey by plush couches and warm accents. Between the breadth of the property and the endless stories that accompany every decoration, the tour takes more than two hours—not at all an unusual time span for a Behnke-designed house. After all, she and her clients have already arrived at the end of a rich journey. F
FORBES HAVENS
Homes Sporting The Most Amazing And Outrageous Outdoor Amenities By Morgan Brennan
travertine marble steam shower and then head into the walk-in closet to get dressed. In Southern California, homes with over-thetop outdoor amenities are becoming increasingly common. “We don’t have the mosquitoes and humidity that places like Florida do so you can have your doors and windows open,” says Canavan. “Even in cheaper homes, buyers want areas where they can watch TV outside, where they can have a fireplace, where they can lay down,” adds Deirdre Coit, Canavan’s partner at Coldwell Banker. With warm weather and the outdoors beckoning, we picked through listings in search of homes offering the most amazing and outrageous outdoor amenities. We got some help from the folks at Realtor.com, Sotheby’s International Realty, Coldwell Banker Previews,
Homes with Outrageous Outdoor Amenities (clockwise from top left): Tribeca Penthouse, New York, NY; Tribeca Penthouse, New York, NY; Falling Rock Lane, Indian Wells, CA
Photographs Clockwise from top left: Sotheby’s International Realty; Sotheby’s international realty; Coldwell Banker Previews International
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hen the Falling Rock Lane Estate was built 11 years ago in Indian Wells, Calif., the architects had a desert oasis in mind. They carved out a manmade pond with 19 waterfalls, and suspended over it an 18,400-square-foot glass and concrete house. Located outside of Los Angeles in the tony, CEO-centric Vintage Club golf course development, the modern manse touts four bedrooms, a professional-grade kitchen, a theater room, an elevator and a climatecontrolled 12,000-square foot garage tucked underneath the side of the house. There’s even a separate golf cart garage. Listed for $12 million fully furnished, perhaps the biggest draw is the incorporation of outdoor amenities into its design. (It’s also available for weekly rental if you have a cool $100,000 to toss around.) “When you talk about indoor-outdoor living, this house is literally like having the outside come into your home,” gushes Susan Canavan, a luxury realtor with Coldwell Banker Previews International and the co-listing agent for the property. Starting with the floors. The home’s hallways feature transparent glass that exposes the pond below. And if you want to hear the sound of all that water meandering down the hillside, the glass wall curtains between the living room and dining room retract and open out onto “floating” sun terraces. The backyard’s massive patio features a resort-style swimming pool with a swim-up bar and is studded with rock fire pits. Past the patio is a mile-long hiking trail that leads into the canyon below. Then there’s the master bedroom suite. It touts two adjoining outdoor areas including an expansive bathroom that leads out to a private sunbathing terrace and outdoor shower. You can work out in the bathroom’s adjoining gym, meander outside to lounge in the sun, rinse off while enjoying the mountain breeze, amble back inside behind the freestanding wall into a
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Coldwell Banker Previews International
Falling Rock Lane, Indian Wells, CA
Corcoran Group and Luxury Portfolio Collection in our quest. Among the most commonly sought open-air amenities involve dining: outdoor kitchens, built-in barbecues, pizza ovens, even full wet bars. Lavish spreads decorated with weatherresistant electronics like televisions and high-tech sound systems have become popular, too. “For the Hamptons, the new trend is covered outdoor spaces so people can be outside as much as possible, especially now that it’s summertime,” says Evan Kulman, a senior vice president with Corcoran Group in Long Island, NY. He believes over-the-top outdoor amenities are gaining traction because they add additional usable space to properties in a market dominated by summertime vacationers. “This seems to be sparking a lot of interest and people coming here are gravitating towards it.” Kulman co-represents an East Hampton estate that was listed less than a month ago for $5 million after it was completed by its developerowner. The single-story, limestonecovered house boasts 7,000 square feet of interior living space but its “wow
factor” is a 1,600-square-foot open-air living area. Extending out from the house, a covered poolside space includes a living room area with fireplace and flat-screen TV that drops from the ceiling, a kitchen and dining area, an adjoining bathroom, even a bed to nap in while enjoying the breeze. Retractable screens drop from the ceiling as well to block out the sun if it gets too bright. In areas of the country where it’s warm year-round, some homeowners have gotten even more creative. In Scottsdale, Ariz., an estate on North Coconino Road has telescoping doors that retract and collapse into frames, opening out onto an outdoorsman’s paradise. There’s a low-maintenance synthetic turf that acts as a lawn in the desert climate, a five-hole golf course, two hot tubs and a “lazy river” pool with stone slide. It’s on sale for $5.85 million. Scottsdale isn’t the only town with homes touting amusement parkinspired water features. In Las Vegas, the backyard of a home on Wood Creek Court listed for $6.5 million has a massive pool spanned by a bridge, a swimup sunken bar, a manmade “beach
sand island,” and a winding lazy river that feeds into a grotto. And in Austin, Texas, the Britannia Manor II, owned by videogame developer Richard Garriott, boasts a telescope-bedecked rooftop observatory, a lighted outdoor track and an outdoor pool with a waterslide stretching from the home’s second floor. If the weather gets chilly you need only swim through the underwater tunnel into the indoor pool and spa area. It’s listed for $4.1 million. Other unusual amenities at posh compounds for sale include a hedge maze and life-sized chess board at Mel Gibson’s former Greenwich, Conn. estate Old Mill Farm, which recently came back to market for $33 million; a private rooftop pool and outdoor theater room in Miami’s Icon South Beach penthouse (asking price, $19 million); and a full-scale replica of the labyrinth at Chartres, France, found at Mountain Village, Colo.’s Highlands Estate ($19.9 million). F