What Do We Need From Our Homes Right Now?

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.

This story is part of The Future of Home, a collaboration between the editors of WIRED and Architectural Digest to help you understand what “home” will look like tomorrow and beyond.

DRUMMOND: It also raises an interesting point: How far are we willing to go to feel secure? How much of our privacy, or our family’s privacy, are we willing to potentially compromise?

ASTLEY: Some people are opting out completely! I loved Jill Kargman’s humorous piece on the analog home—she is so sharp and funny about the backlash to smart everything. I hear it too when I speak to designers, whose clients are now asking for low-tech solutions like working landline phones. We’ve rounded up 10 design talents to share their forecasts on future trends, and they also predict homes becoming calmer, with nooks for homeowners to disconnect. Designers increasingly see themselves as the ones who can bring the human touch back to interiors. Call it a new role for the profession! Maybe the ultimate luxury is less technology instead of more.

DRUMMOND: Luxury is also increasingly out of many people’s reach. This is what we heard when we surveyed readers around the world about what “home” means to them now. There wasn’t one answer, but there was a common theme: People want homes they can afford. For years, the future of home was the smarter, the better. Now, WIRED readers are more concerned with homes that work with their budgets and feel safe from the impacts of climate change. Even our Gear team, who spend their days reviewing the newest and coolest gadgets, when asked for home tech suggestions, came back with a collection of practical lamps.

ASTLEY: Yes, we also saw affordability come up in Jackie Cooperman’s reporting on what the starter-home dream looks like today. It’s hard to talk about the future when a house feels out of reach for so many.

DRUMMOND: All of which speaks to why AD and WIRED wanted to collaborate on this special issue. Our teams have very specific, informed perspectives on the current moment. We know that even though there’s a lot of hype around automation and optimization, the best homes in the future might be the most adaptable ones. Or, as Katie Thornton illustrates in her piece on parametric insurance, homes in communities that are prepared for the worst.

ASTLEY: Right! Creating spaces that work for our modern lives. No matter what happens next.