Production designer Barbara Ling, celebrated for recreating a bygone era on screen, has died at 73 following a cancer diagnosis in Santa Barbara. Her most prestigious recognition came when she won an Academy Award for her work on Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film, sharing the honor for best production design with set decorator Nancy Haigh.

Throughout her four-decade career, Ling collaborated with renowned directors on numerous significant productions spanning multiple genres, from rock-and-roll dramas to crime thrillers and comic-book adaptations. Her distinctive approach prioritised authentic, built environments over digital alternatives, emphasising real materials and genuine architectural elements to immerse audiences in carefully constructed worlds. For the Tarantino film, this meant painstakingly restoring vintage storefronts and installing period-accurate lighting fixtures across Los Angeles locations, a physical undertaking she championed as demonstrating the irreplaceable value of tangible set construction.