In the 20 years this home took to design and build, the architecture and technology become more modern.

In 1987, the owner purchased 42 acres to grow citrus in an agricultural community north of Los Angeles. Postmodern architecture was all the rage, so the owner hired Zoltan E. Pali to design a Georgianstyle residence.

The young architect, a disciple of the Case Study modernists, was just starting out on his own.

In the 20 years between the original drawings and full completion, both men, and the home, evolved in a variety of ways.

The result, they say, is a better house because they dragged their feet and took their time in designing what they call a "modern ranch house.” Their lengthy design process also allowed for home technology to get better and better—all of which makes the 10,000-square-foot home more efficient to manage.

The owner—an avid art collector and owner of a drywall company—says “Living here opened up a different way of thinking,” of what he affectionately calls Lucky Dog Ranch. “In my Cape Cod house, there was a lot of tchotchke stuff lying around and that was part of the style. Now people walk in, look around and say, ‘Do you really live this way? Come on … did you clean up the house for us?’ My wife and I look at each other, and say, ‘Yeah. It’s just the way we live.’ It’s a process. Now it comes naturally.”

Can pushing buttons really run the show inside and outside this sprawling home? “The technology gives me more confidence,” the homeowner says. “I don’t have to worry if I left a closet light on for 14 days.” Music, lighting, TV and DVD entertainment, and heating and air conditioning are all controlled from several Crestron touch panels installed by Patrick Martinez of DSI Entertainment Systems Inc.

“They gave me buttons to push, and that’s all I do,” the homeowner says. While the homeowner has been running is successful drywall business since 1976, and has worked with numerous architects through the years, he especially learned to appreciate his architect’s artistic expression. “I got him and he got me,” the homeowner says. “I knew he’d come up with something neat.”

Pali’s firm, Studio Pali Fekete (SPF:a), is busy today with projects that include the renovation of LACMA West for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the design of the new Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, which will wind in and around the historic Beverly Hills Post Office. The firm helped jump-start a Culver City renaissance by designing and building SPF:a Gallery: a modernist structure that houses the firm’s studio, a restaurant and seven lofts, including the home Pali shares with architect Judit Meda Fekete, who is his 20-year partner and mother of their two children. Designing Lucky Dog Ranch, however, came long before Pali earned the clout that comes with winning AIA Honor Awards, or becoming executive architect of Malibu’s Getty Villa Museum renovation.

“This was my first job,” he says of the 10,000-square-foot project. “I didn’t have a body of work to point to.” Pali says that in trying to give the homeowner what he wanted, and striving to “retain a level of purity,” he compromised more than he would today. He admits that he wasn’t happy with the original design that revolved around the columned entry ballroom.

“Richard Meier meets Robert Stern,” he says. Thankfully, economic downturns, prestigious commissions, and twists and turns in both men’s lives stalled the project for many years. During those down times, Pali kept tinkering with the design until he came up with his own version of a modern ranch house in the mid-1990s. The owner had just planted a lemon grove with 14-foot spacing between the trees.