There’s no place like home—even if it keeps changing. After all, the places where we reside in 2026 look remarkably different than they did even a few decades ago: the style and decor, the technology and appliances, and even the way houses are insured and protected from natural disasters.
The external forces shaping our day-to-day lives today, in turn, will inform what makes a home desirable—and safe—decades from now. To help readers navigate that change, Architectural Digest and WIRED teamed up on a series of stories about what the next era of “home” might look like. Here, AD’s and WIRED’s global editorial directors, Amy Astley and Katie Drummond, talk about the thinking that went into this special issue.
AMY ASTLEY: Katie, I am so excited to share our first collaborative digital issue 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’ve always believed that where we live should be a place of beauty and comfort. But lately it feels like the concept of home has become more complicated. People are wrestling with all kinds of concerns—climate issues, material costs, new technology—that go way beyond what color to paint their living rooms.
KATIE DRUMMOND: I agree. And that dynamic you mention is top of mind, especially with the rapid advancement and integration of AI. At WIRED, we spend a lot of time thinking and writing about how technology is embedded in our lives. For us, the question isn’t whether your home will be smart—it will, whether you actively seek it out or not—but how you’ll actually use the technology. Most importantly, where will it be useful? And when will it be seamless? The promise of a smart home, where you walk in and everything auto-adjusts to your preferences, is still a dream.
ASTLEY: We all want life-enhancing tech, 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 mosquitos,” jokes AD100 architect and Olson Kundig founder Tom Kundig), as visually stunning, but built for the very real and urgent risk of rising tides. Resilient design used to sound extreme, and now it’s essential. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Fazzare reports that across the globe, architects are turning to local, low-tech materials like compressed earth, bamboo, and fire-resistant timber. For them, the future may be in reimagining what we already know works.
DRUMMOND: That idea comes up in our profile of Stewart Brand, a countercultural icon and the author of The Whole Earth Catalog. He’s 87 now and has built a state-of-the-art eco home fully designed for his stage of life on the property he shares with his wife in Petaluma, California. As life expectancies increase, how people age in place, and the technology they use to facilitate that, evolves too. Steven Blum wrote about this in his touching essay on monitoring his aging father with an always-on microphone, and how complicated, and perhaps invasive, that kind of help can be.
ASTLEY: I’ve read other pieces on the topic of assisting loved ones with technology, though those focused more on robot companions or smart trackers. Steven’s unique take was really moving, especially as he considers the loneliness gap this technology can bridge.
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