Designing the Dream House of an 87-Year-Old Tech Visionary

This past January, Stewart Brand published a book, Maintenance of Everything: Part One. “Maintenance is what keeps everything going,” helium begins. “It’s what keeps beingness going.”

Brand’s beingness has been going for 87 years, but lately the going has been tough. The antheral known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog—the 1960s countercultural usher to self-sufficiency that Steve Jobs was fond of—has an incurable illness and is down to 130 pounds, an alarming value for a astir 6-footer. Brand’s caput is crisp arsenic ever; you can’t speech to the antheral for 5 minutes without learning something. But his once-nimble movements are present cautious, and he’s ne'er acold from an oxygen tank. Stewart Brand’s body, successful different words, requires changeless maintenance.

Brand is an icon. Besides the Catalog, he’s written a support afloat of books connected a panoply of topics. I’ve known him for much than 40 years. In 1968, helium worked down the scenes of what became known arsenic the Mother of All Demos, which introduced the modern machine interface to the world. He was a godfather-like beingness successful the archetypal years of WIRED. Brand is the surviving transportation betwixt computing’s counterculture roots and the modern world, wherever his dependable inactive resonates.

Last autumn I visited Brand and his wife, Ryan Phelan, astatine their home, a erstwhile equine workplace successful Petaluma, 40 miles northbound of San Francisco. The spot looks retired connected an expanse of brownish marshes, the Petaluma River, and disconnected to the east, a debased skyline of greenish rolling hills. On a tiny elevation are 3 buildings with achromatic siding and stately greenish roofs. The mates lives successful 1 of those buildings, an updated farmhouse that’s much than a period old. Another resurrected building, a erstwhile schoolhouse, contains Brand’s book-lined workspace. But it was the 3rd structure, tucked betwixt these two, that funny me. This location was conscionable being completed. As we sat connected the woody structure of the caller structure, Brand and Phelan explained to maine that it had been speedily—but thoughtfully—constructed to accommodate Brand arsenic helium copes with property and illness.

Brand is simply a world-class pragmatist and a philosopher of structures; helium erstwhile wrote a publication called How Buildings Learn astir however homes and commercialized properties germinate implicit time. This bespoke house—essentially an inhabitable prosthetic—struck maine arsenic an look of Brand and Phelan’s Whole Earth-ish strategy for playing the losing manus that biology deals us.

In 2020, the brace had told maine astir their determination to forgo intubation should 1 of them declaration Covid and necessitate a ventilator. I sensed that clear-eyed deficiency of sentiment astatine play present too, and wondered however Brand and Phelan—who is simply a cofounder and enforcement manager of Revive & Restore, a biotech nonprofit devoted to wildlife conservation—were designing this signifier of life. As I returned for aggregate visits, I recovered that neither Brand nor Phelan spot the caller location arsenic a mode of coping with decline. They presumption it arsenic an hold of their romance.

This communicative is portion of The Future of Home, a collaboration betwixt the editors of WIRED and Architectural Digest to assistance you recognize what “home” volition look similar time and beyond.

It was February erstwhile I drove backmost to Petaluma from San Francisco, punching a codification into a gross disconnected the road and heading down an unpaved road, past a cattle pasture and implicit immoderate railroad tracks, until marshlands unfolded earlier me. Phelan and her Labrador retriever greeted me, and we walked up a elevation to the houses. The caller building—they telephone it their studio—was astir finished, and she and Brand entered it with me. She warned that helium mightiness lone beryllium bully for a fractional hr oregon so. The speech ended up going for much than 90 minutes, with the taxable exhausted earlier Brand was.

We clump into a tiny surviving abstraction with a sofa and chair. A stack of books is connected a broadside table. Phelan explained that her main extremity was to forestall their location beingness from collapsing nether the demands of caregiving. “I wanted to guarantee that passim his ordeal with his illness, that helium would person agency, and that I would person agency—that I wouldn't consciousness similar I was the nursemaid erstwhile I privation to beryllium his wife,” she said.

We bash a walk-through of the studio, each 715 quadrate feet of it. Off of the surviving space, nether an arch, is simply a motorized bed. There are nary rails, and it looks thing similar infirmary equipment. Brand grabs a distant and playfully shows maine however it rises and kneels. The room counters are little than usual, to accommodate Brand if helium ever needs a wheelchair. The bath is the abstraction that’s astir optimized for accessibility. The ablution has nary enclosure, making it casual to participate and exit, and there’s a deep, Japanese-style tub with a folding spot that doubles arsenic a measurement into the basin.

We settee into the surviving area, and the speech drifts to managing the precise last signifier of life. Phelan and Brand sermon the morals of “taking the cocktail” for a graceful farewell. The mates has fixed it a batch of thought. Phelan makes it wide that she doesn’t spot the location arsenic a staging country for specified an exit. For the clip being there’s nary need, and we instrumentality to the taxable of the location we’re sitting in. We sermon the planning, the strategy, the architect, the contractors. I accidental I’d similar to speech to those contractors, and Phelan gives maine the sanction of a father-and-son team, Steve and Wes Coffin.

I archer her that’s a small weird.

“We ne'er thought astir that,” says Phelan. Pause. “It’s a wee grim.”

But Brand is delighted. “This is the nicest coffin!” helium crows. “Woo hoo!”

The communicative of this Petaluma workplace begins a fractional period agone erstwhile Patty Phelan, a caller postgraduate of UC Berkeley, applied for a occupation astatine the Whole Earth organization, which astatine the clip was a escaped confederation of projects, including the catalog and a quarterly magazine. (She began utilizing her mediate name, Ryan, years later. It was a amended acceptable for her get-shit-done personality.) As she recounts this, Brand interrupts. “I hired her due to the fact that I was successful emotion with her,” helium says.

“No, you didn’t,” she says.

“She was fundamentally jailbait astatine that point,” Brand jokes. (Phelan was 25 and Brand was 39.)

Early successful their relationship, Phelan had returned to her flat from a ballet people and abruptly felt debilitating symptom successful her abdomen. Brand rushed implicit and took her to the hospital. She was hustled into country for a burst ovarian cyst. As John Markoff describes it successful his Brand biography, Whole Earth, erstwhile she came retired of the operating room, Brand greeted her with a pillow helium had recovered from her apartment. That’s erstwhile she knew—“This guy’s a keeper,” Phelan told Markoff.

The brace had already discovered a shared zeal for antithetic homes and large projects. In 1982, they impulsively paid $8,000 for the bones of a dilapidated woody tugboat. “The wood was truthful rotten, you could drawback handfuls of the bulwarks with your bare hands,” Brand wrote successful How Buildings Learn. The tugboat, named Mirene, was built successful 1912 successful Coos Bay, Oregon, and aft a agelong vocation of hauling cargo and pushing boats around, ended up moored connected the Sausalito waterfront. Brand and Phelan had heard astir a section builder named Pete Retondo and paddled a rowboat to his waterfront location to inquire for help. Retondo wasn’t yet certified arsenic an architect, but helium led a unit that yet rebuilt Mirene into an exquisite treasure, with a varnished wood interior and a versatile kitchen.

They moved into the tugboat, and successful October 1983, they got married. The Mirene was a joyful home. The eating array came from a adjacent vas that Otis Redding had occupied; fable has it that Redding wrote “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” connected that surface. The surviving section, toward the bow, has ample bookshelves, 2 leather casual chairs, and a wood stove. Every New Year’s Day, Brand and Phelan cruised the San Francisco Bay and invited their neighbors to join. The waterfront was afloat of young couples similar them. “Lots of parties, radical jumping disconnected their boats into the water, tons of nudity,” says Phelan.

There were drawbacks. A tugboat is simply a continued workout successful … maintenance. And patience. Their wood-paneled chamber was successful the aviator house, and they climbed an extracurricular ladder to scope it. “After a decennary oregon so, with astir everybody who lives connected houseboats, what bash they crave? Land,” Phelan says.

One time successful 2005, Brand and Phelan were sailing Mirene connected the Petaluma River erstwhile they saw a beauteous property, a equine ranch conscionable past the marshlands. It appeared to beryllium abandoned. “Stewart and I looked astatine this derelict-looking farmhouse, and a big, immense hay barn falling successful astatine the roof. And we some said, ‘Gosh, if we were ever going to bargain a property, this is wherever we'd buy, close present connected the river.’”

At first, they couldn’t fig retired however to get to the property, fto unsocial find the address. They spent a fewer weekends driving up Highway 101 and heading down dusty backstage driveways. Finally they recovered the ungraded roadworthy that led to the farm.

It was owned by a pistillate who shared the deed with her siblings. She did not look anxious to sell. Brand gave her a transcript of his publication How Buildings Learn and yet she softened. She bought retired her siblings, and successful 2005 Brand and Phelan took over. They hired the Coffins to renovate the farmhouse. “There was nary foundation,” says Steve Coffin, the dad. When they opened up the walls, they recovered paper clippings from the 1890s.

The mates past decided to marque usage of a guano-infested gathering connected the property, the erstwhile schoolhouse. They utilized a crane to determination it person to the farmhouse. The archetypal level would go Brand’s library, with a spiral staircase starring to a second-floor impermanent chamber with 7.5-foot windows. The windows were the archetypal connected the West Coast to usage Ornilux, a peculiar solid that’s detectable by birds. Phelan, aft all, is an avid birder; she and Brand person spent a bully portion of the past 15 years successful a genomic effort to revive the extinct rider pigeon.

For galore years, Brand and Phelan continued surviving connected their tugboat portion spending agelong weekends connected land. Phelan cultivated an elaborate plot and roamed the spot with her dog. (“Mostly, we person 50 acres of marsh,” she says.) During Covid, they moved full-time to Petaluma. A tugboat home, says Phelan, “is not property friendly.”

Brand had been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic illness wherever scarring of the lungs leaves them stiffened and restricted. In his emblematic straightforward way, Brand describes his information arsenic “progressive, incurable, and fatal.” After diagnosis, endurance clip is mostly 3 to 5 years. Brand has agelong surpassed that, but helium has steadily mislaid lung capacity. He’s present down to astir 20 percent.

Early successful 2024, Phelan began talking to Retondo and the Coffins astir what they mightiness physique if Brand needed help. The archetypal thought was to adhd to the existing farmhouse, possibly with a abstracted entranceway for a full-time caretaker. Issues with the septic tank, among different things, scuttled that plan.

Then they lit connected the thought of gathering successful the spread betwixt the location and the library. On the Mirene, Brand and Phelan were accustomed to surviving spaces with an antithetic flow; they’d person thing akin with these abstracted buildings.

At first, Phelan and Brand were vague astir what this caller location was for. “They didn't recognize precisely what they wanted,” says Wes Coffin. “Between them and the designer it was, what was the existent use?”

They decided it would beryllium the spot wherever Brand could comfortably bent out, on with Phelan. Later, if circumstances dictated, Brand mightiness slumber determination with his noisy oxygen apparatus. At immoderate constituent a caretaker mightiness unrecorded there.

Phelan did a batch of the readying portion Brand wrote his attraction book. “I wanted it wheelchair accessible from the beginning,” she says. “I wanted a truly beauteous bathroom. And I wanted a bathtub for two.” The bathroom’s level is angled truthful that h2o from the unfastened ablution spirals into a drain. “It was designed with the thought that you person to beryllium capable to crook your wheelchair successful a circle, which requires a 5-foot diameter,” says Retondo. The Japanese-style tub is so ample capable to acceptable the 2 of them.

In October 2024, Brand contracted pneumonia. “It truly laid maine low,” helium says. When helium and Phelan visited their longtime doctor, helium sat them down and asked, “Do you privation to dice astatine location oregon successful a hospital?” Phelan urged the builders and the designer to velocity up. They filed for permits successful January 2025 and got them wrong 60 days. Even so, Retondo admits, “We really jump-started the operation a small bit, due to the fact that Ryan was truthful anxious to get it done.”

As the location rose, Brand was nether hospice care. When Retondo came by, helium was taken aback by Brand’s appearance. Mentally, though, Brand was each there. “His property and his intelligence faculties were wholly intact,” says Retondo, who is 77. “We’re some unwilling to bow to the inevitable, I guess.”

Brand rallied, and his presumption was upgraded to palliative care. Brand finds it comical that immoderate billionaires judge they’ll enactment bare and foolish forever. “All these radical who deliberation they're extending their beingness are going to woody with each this, they're each going to die,” says Brand. For now, though, he’s thwarting his grim prognosis by moving connected his 2nd measurement connected maintenance. He was good capable to beforehand the archetypal publication and went connected Ezra Klein’s podcast. He keeps a handwritten diary that logs each scrap of nutrient helium consumes, a precise Stewart Brand-ish pursuit.

In April, Phelan hosted maine for a cruise connected the Mirene, and Brand felt good capable to travel along. He sat contentedly connected the bow and chatted arsenic a two-man squad piloted america nether the Golden Gate Bridge. There won’t beryllium galore much rides connected the beloved tug, arsenic the mates has enactment it up for sale. Maybe immoderate fortunate billionaire volition acceptable speech dreams of immortality and find delight successful the Sausalito harbor.

After the cruise, I sojourn the location 1 past time. Brand tells maine that he’s been into Emily Dickinson lately. I reply that moving connected this communicative had maine reasoning of a celebrated Dickinson poem, does helium cognize which one?

“I do,” says Brand, and begins a paraphrase. “I did not hold for death, helium kindly waited for me. And truthful it goes.”

Brand past says helium has a poem of his own. “It came to maine erstwhile I was realizing I astir apt don’t want, similar Steve Jobs, to person everybody successful the room,” helium says. “But I’d similar to person Ryan there, and I’d beryllium holding her hand. A beingness ends, a beingness goes connected [he points to Phelan], and that is benignant of the existent event. Anytime idiosyncratic dies, beingness goes on, and that’s the river. That’s my decease poem.”

Phelan is not blessed astatine the conversation’s turn. “I gotta accidental thing for the record–it’s not a decease house,” she says, raising her voice. Brand begins to accidental something, but Phelan cuts him off. “It’s not, sweetie,” she says, and past turns to me. “It’s astir the prime of life, it’s the prime of life! It's precise important due to the fact that … conscionable because.”

There, she’s said it. And present she relaxes. “Come spot the bathroom,” she offers. Love and pragmatism, to the precise end.

Let america cognize what you deliberation astir this article. Submit a missive to the exertion at [email protected].