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There is no place Like a house – even if it keeps changing. After all, the places we’ll live in 2026 look markedly different than they did a few decades ago: the style and decor, the technology and appliances, even the way homes are insured and protected from natural disasters.
The external forces that shape our daily lives today will in turn determine what makes a home desirable and safe decades from now. To help readers navigate this change, Architectural Digest and WIRED have collaborated on a series of stories about what the next era of Home might look like. Here, AD and WIRED’s global managing editors, Amy Astley and Katie Drummond, talk about the thinking behind the matter. Special issue.
Amy Astley: Katie, I’m so excited to share our first collaborative digital problem with everyone. When we started talking about working together, we kept coming back to the same question: What do we actually want from our homes, and what do we need from them? At AD, we have always believed that where we live should be a place of beauty and comfort. But recently it seems that the concept of home has become more complex. People are grappling with all kinds of concerns—climate issues, material costs, new technology—that go far beyond the paint color of their living rooms.
Katie Drummond: I agree. This dynamic that I mentioned is our top priority, especially with the rapid progress and integration it is witnessing Amnesty International. At WIRED, we spend a lot of time thinking and writing about how we integrate technology into our lives. For us, the question is not whether you have it The house will be smart— it will happen, whether you’re actively looking for it or not — but how will you actually use this technology. And most importantly, where will it be useful? When will it be smooth? The promise of a smart home, where you walk in and everything is automatically adjusted to your preferences, is still a dream.
Astley: We all want technology that enhances life, but smarter homes must also acknowledge current realities. Fred Bernstein describes Olson Kundig’s Shearwater House, suspended on steel columns 23 feet off the ground (“above even the mosquitoes,” says AD100 architect and Olson Kundig founder Tom Kundig), is visually stunning, but it was built to confront the very real and urgent danger of rising tides. Flexible design once seemed radical, now it’s essential. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Vasari Reports Architects around the world are turning to low-tech local materials such as compressed earth, bamboo and fire-resistant timber. For them, the future may lie in reimagining what we already know works.
Drummond: This idea comes into our About Stuart Brandcountercultural icon and author of The Whole Earth Catalog. He is now 87 years old and has built a state-of-the-art eco-home designed entirely for his stage of life on the property he shares with his wife in Petaluma, California. As life expectancy increases, how people age, and the technology they use to facilitate this, also evolves. Steven Bloom He wrote about it This is in his poignant essay about monitoring his elderly father with an always-on microphone, and how complicated, and perhaps invasive, this kind of assistance can be.
Astley: I’ve read other articles on the topic of helping loved ones with technology, although those articles focused more on robotic companions or smart tracking devices. Stephen’s unique stance was truly poignant, especially considering the loneliness gap that this technology could bridge.
