Home, a documentary series about experimental living spaces

Home, on Apple TV+ is a series about experimental ways of building homes and community spaces. Each of the homes highlighted in the 9 episodes encompass ideas that could benefit many others, save resources, and improve the environment.

The forward thinking designers of the homes are sometimes architects or engineers, but there are also community developers, artists and others involved in these projects. The episodes start by showing you an individual home. It lets you into the mind of the builder and talks about why the house is unique and experimental. Then each episode explains how this could affect many others.

The house built inside a greenhouse achieved a Mediterranean climate in Sweden. But it also was energy efficient, had its own water recycling system, and produced food for the family. All these ideas could be used at scale.

In Chicago, an artist took derelict buildings and made them into vital and beautiful spaces for the community around him. Again, the materials used were recycled. A library, a theater space, an art gallery and performance space – all were created from buildings that were meant to be demolished.

In Bali, a home was built entirely from bamboo. This is a resource Bali has in plenty, but no one ever imagined it used in this way before. A whole new industry was born.

In Hong Kong a man converted his 344 square foot apartment into many different usable spaces with moving walls and clever ways to make double and triple use of different spaces and objects. Since most Hong Kong apartments are about this same size, his techniques can help thousands of others.

In Maine a man figured out how to make a sustainable home using a technique of burning the wood that would be the siding. A single wood stove using only 1/2 cord of wood heated the house year round.

In India, a woman interested in using locally crafted materials proved that clay pots can make an arched roof. She used many other hand crafted ideas in her home, showing the way for many artisans to find employment.

In Austin, Texas, a writer took formerly polluted industrial land and built an underground home, all the while restoring the land. He’s working with others to restore a large swath of land near the river that was once poisoned with industrial waste.

In Malibu, a man took over a location that built wildly imaginative spaces with items from the Paramount movie lot that were meant for the landfill. He also figured out a way to create water out of air. This technique can be used anywhere. It also offers a way to create and store water in arid, wildfire prone areas of the country.

In Mexico, a team of builders in California with the desire to build homes for the billions of people who don’t have one teamed up with a 3D builder in Austin to create the first 3D built community in Mexico.

I started watching this series because I’m curious about experimental houses, but it quickly became clear that the houses were picked as examples because what was learned in building them could apply to so many others. They were all sustainable and ecologically sound. Every different idea was a way to live sustainably and also provide a beautiful space for people to live in.

Here’s a sample of what you’ll see in this series.

Have you watched this series? What were your thoughts?