Why Design Lovers Are Obsessed With Apple TV's New Series "Home"
Why Design Lovers Are Obsessed With Apple TV's New Series "Home"
A family home inside a greenhouse in rural Sweden. A bamboo treehouse in Bali. A 344 square-foot Hong Kong apartment that transforms to infinite layouts. These are just a few of the boundary-pushing buildings featured in the new AppleTV+ series Home. Although the houses featured are some of the most unconventional and innovative in the world, this is not your average home show. "We knew we weren't making a series that was just about incredible architecture," Doug Pray, a director and executive producer on the show tells House Beautiful. "The series is just as much about the homeowners and the concept of innovation and big ideas and solving problems creatively as it was just the house itself."
Tellingly, neither Pray nor many of the show's producers have a background in home or renovation television—but that just may be what makes the series so compelling. In each episode, viewers are introduced to a home, yes, but, more important, to the people living in it—often the ones who created it, too. Over the course of each 30 minute episode, you can't help but become enraptured by a Swedish family trying to find a safe space for an Autistic son, or a Chicago artist bringing his community together through a new space. "Nobody is going to just watch a show about the home," Pray says. "Even the remodeling stories are out the characters. In any good show, that’s essential."
Through the homes, viewers also come to understand the ideas that went into these structures. "We wanted to find homes that are innovative and forward-looking, that speak to design today," Pray explains. His hope is that homeowners in any type of home can be inspired by these ideas. "I don’t want this series to be something viewers would watch and just think, 'Oh, that’s nice but I can’t have that. I don’t live in Sweden, or I don’t have money, or I’m not an architect,'" Pray says. "I want the opposite. I want people to think, 'You know, maybe we could do that in our house to a small degree. Maybe we could put plants on our balcony in Brooklyn; maybe we can’t put a greenhouse around it, but we could get the benefit of these plants. Maybe we can recycle our gray water."
See the homes from the series below and watch all nine episodes on AppleTV+ now.
1) Naturhus, Sweden
In chilly Sweden, Anders Solvarm has created a Mediterranean climate for his family by building a home encased in a greenhouse, inspired by one in Stockholm by Bengt Warne. "The Naturhus was built around trying to enhance the interaction between people and plants," says Solvarm. "A home is not only a shelter, it can also be a place to feed you, both with food and energy."
2) Sharma Spring, Bali
Elora Hardy grew up surrounded by bamboo in Bali, but it wasn't until she moved back after a stint working in fashion in New York that she decided to make a living of working with the flexible, eco-friendly material. Sharma Spring, the home she shares with her husband and children, is a swooping, multi-level treehouse, one of 20 bamboo structures she's built with her firm, Ibuku, which champions bamboo as a sustainable building material. "“You can grow a house in four years," says Hardy. " Wood needs centuries to grow; concrete has fossil fuels that take a millennia. Five years before this house was complete, none of the bamboo in it existed."
3) The Domestic Transformer, Hong Kong
Gary Chang grew up in this 344-square-foot apartment with his family, and then bought it several years ago. By devising a clever system of moving parts, Chang turned his home into a space that transforms for any task he needs to complete, changing from a bedroom to kitchen to dining room to living room throughout the day. "You don’t need a large home to live luxuriously," he says. "Luxury is in the details, and how you use it. I hope I will be remembered for teaching people that small is beautiful."
4) Wall House, India
After a visit to the experimental village of Auroville, a community built around craftsmanship, architect Anupama Kundoo built a house there using all local labor and materials. Years later, she—working with the same team—reconstructed the Wall House to scale for the Venice Biennale, where it gained worldwide attention. "My house is proof that hand skills should be celebrated," says Kundoo.
5) Listening House, Theaster Gates
"When I think about home for myself, it has less to do with the house and more to do with my neighborhood," says artist Theaster Gates of his hometown of Chicago's South Side. So, when a duilding in disrepair came up for sale, Gates transformed it into a hybrid home/meeting/learning space for the community—then renovated the house next door, too, for the Black Cinema House. "When you walk by an abandoned building, it’s hard not to feel heavy," says the artist, who salvaged many of the materials for the house himself from discards around the city. "My buildings, they constitute a love investment."
6) Edgeland House, Austin
Built on the site of a pipeline excavation, the Edgeland House is tucked into the ground like a crater. Homeowner Chris Brown enlisted Bercy Chen Studio to design the structure in a way that reinterpreted traditional Native American pit houses and incorporated the shapes of Japanese origami. "I wanted to build a house that could actively generate a sense of wonder," Brown says.
7) Soot House, Maine
While studying at RISD, artist Anthony Esteves traveled to Japan, where he was fascinated by the burnt-wood technique of yaki-sugi. When he and his wife, designer Julie O-Rourke, bought a secluded plot of land in Maine, he built a house over the course of four years that incorporated yaki-sugi on the exterior and an interior of subtle, warm texture. "For me, beauty is in the really functional things, the everyday," says Esteves. The house is also extremely energy efficient, a reflection of the couple's respect for their surroundings. "We wanted to raise kids here, to live our lives in natural way, really focusing on our impact on the land," says O'Rourke. "It wasn’t ever about the house."
8) Xanabu Ranch, Malibu
Built by design icon Tony Duquette, this idiosyncratic escape in the hills of Malibu is at once an Adirondack-style hunting lodge and a miniature village comprised of repurposed architectural elements. The property is now owned by architect David Hertz, the brains behind such cutting-edge homes as the Californication House (from the 2007 David Duchovny series) and the famous Malibu Wing House. Hertz, along with his wife Laura Doss-Hertz, have continued to build upon Duquette's legacy, adding repurposed and found objects to the whimsical property. "Early in my career I saw a lot of waste," recalls Hertz, whose father and grandfather, like Duquette, were Hollywood set builders (many of Duquette's set pieces ended up at Xanabu). "I found tremendous creative potential in repurposing what we waste."
9) New Story House, Mexico
For the final episode of the series, the show focuses on a lack of home: "There’s well over a billion people who do not have adequate shelter around the world," says Alexandra Lafci. "When you don’t have a home, that has such negative effects in your mental and physical effect and also in your ability to get yourself up out of that situation."
Lafci is the cofounder of the San Francisco-based nonprofit New Story, which began with an effort to construct simple, concrete homes in Haiti and has since expanded to built low-cost housing in several poverty-stricken areas. In Mexico, the company partnered with House Beautiful 2020 Visionary ICON to create 3D-printed homes.
In Tabasco, Mexico, New Story and ICON collaborated with the local government to obtain land and build a 3D-printed communities for 50 families. Before moving in, couple Angel Mario Cordoba and Iselea Javier were living in a structure of slatted wood covered with repurposed canvas packaging.
"My dream would be to provide another life for my family, to provide a decent home for them where they can be happy and play," says Cordoba. "And for the first time in my life, I feel like that dream can come true."
Greenhouses, treehouses, and transformer apartments feature on the addictive series.