Zac Efron is building an ambitious off-grid home in Australia that will incorporate hemp across everything from walls and insulation to mattresses, textiles, and interior components. The project, designed by environmental innovator Joost Bakker, reflects a growing interest in sustainable construction and explores how industrial hemp could play a larger role in the future of architecture.
Interest in building with hempcrete—also known as hemp-lime or hemp concrete—is definitely growing. Such an idea is not necessarily new, but every time a project like this appears, people pay attention. And while there still aren’t many real-life examples, the benefits sound almost endless: eco-homes, community projects, sustainable architecture studios, materials that breathe better, help restore the past, shape the future, and take better care of the present.
And so, after making headlines in Australia last year, hemp has found its way into a home very much at the center of pop culture: Zac Efron is building his new house in Australia using this cannabis-derived material.
The High School Musical alum and host of Down to Earth (a Netflix series that followed him around the world exploring more sustainable ways to live, eat, and inhabit the planet) is now building his own home with industrial hemp. The project, named FutureCave, seems to fit into an ongoing personal search for a more sustainable way of living.
Hempcrete, or hemp-lime, is a biocomposite made from hemp hurd, lime and water. Hemp hurd is the woody inner core of the industrial hemp stalk. It is not the flower; it is neither the leaf nor the part of the plant associated with recreational use.
According to People and E! News, Efron is building the project on a 128-hectare property near the border between New South Wales and Queensland, in an area located about an hour from Byron Bay. The actor purchased the land in 2020 and chose environmental designer Joost Bakker to develop a sustainable home that would use hemp across multiple parts of the construction and interior.
What Will Zac Efron’s Hemp Home, FutureCave, Look Like?
FutureCave will be built in an area of significant natural beauty and value. The property sits on land with rainforest, waterfalls, creeks, walking trails, and ancient cedar trees. The home will feature six bedroom pods connected by outdoor walkways, each with its own bathroom and rooftop garden, as well as a large living area on the property.
The house will be an off-grid project, meaning a home designed to operate as independently as possible from traditional power, water, gas, and waste systems. In FutureCave, that low-impact logic will also extend to the materials: hemp will be present in the walls, insulation, interiors, and textiles. Hemp Building Directory reports that the project will also include a green roof holding 100 tons of soil, with a low-impact approach designed to integrate with the surrounding environment.
And here is the most striking part: hemp will not only be in the blocks or the walls. The material will reportedly be used in internal blocks, joinery, mattresses, curtains, and pillows. Bakker, the home’s designer, has also said he is working with an appliance manufacturer to explore the possibility of creating a washing machine with a hemp-based drum.
The home will also use sustainable boards from Plantbord in the kitchen and bathrooms. Bakker shared an update with the company, which describes its product as a particle board made from materials designed to restore soil health, as well as the health of the people working and living with it. According to the update, Efron’s home will use 200 of the boards for the kitchen and bathroom joinery. Separately, HempBuild Magazine reported that the joinery will use a plant-based circular resin from the Dutch company Plantics.
Hemp Building Directory adds more details: rugs, curtains, insulation, “breathable” interior walls, plant-based mattresses, and even early explorations into hemp-based battery technologies or appliance components.
In short, Efron is not just adding some hemp to his house. He is betting on a full package: using industrial hemp as one of the central materials in a home designed to breathe better, consume less energy, and have a lower impact on the environment where it is being built.
Who Is Joost Bakker, the Designer Zac Efron Chose?
To understand FutureCave, we have to understand Joost Bakker.
Bakker is a Dutch-Australian environmental designer known for low-waste projects, regenerative design, and experimentation with natural materials. He is also behind Future Food System, a project that explores how to build and live through more circular systems, where architecture, food, waste, and materials are all thought of together.
Efron did not come to Bakker simply because he wanted a different, futuristic, or viral house. And he did not land there by chance: the two met while filming Down to Earth in 2021, and the actor was struck by the way Bakker designs spaces. In interviews cited by Australian media, Efron explained that, after living in many places around the world, every time he visited one of Bakker’s spaces, he “had a sense of ‘this is actually what I want in life.’”
On Instagram, Bakker wrote that it is not every day Zac Efron asks you to design his home, and that he was especially excited because it would be the first home the actor has ever owned. He also wrote that Efron had fallen in love with Future Food System and with Bakker’s family home in Monbulk, and now wanted a home of his own where the designer could push his ideas “as far as they can go.”
Bakker also explained that over the past year, they had been experimenting with hemp blocks, exploring alternatives to concrete that, according to him, can help restore the environment. In that process, he mentioned two elements: hemp and oysters. Hemp, for its potential to repair soil health; oysters, for their role as natural ocean restorers.
According to Hemp Building Directory, the project could use a new type of lime-free hemp block, with oyster shells as the binder, in a form similar to a lightweight building block. The publication reports that the project could require around 2,200 blocks.
Bakker summed it up with a line that feels both beautiful and perfect for this story: he wants to use “the most cutting-edge technology,” invented by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago. In other words, the project looks forward by returning to mineral materials, ancient techniques, and building methods that are less dependent on synthetic systems.
Hempcrete and hemp-based building materials have real benefits, but they also have clear limits. They are not structural on their own. They can be more expensive upfront, require trained labor, and depend on suppliers, local regulations, industrial hemp availability, and technical knowledge. Hemp Building Directory also points to bottlenecks in Australia, including limited processing infrastructure and the need for more builder training.
Ultimately, even if this type of construction remains out of reach for most people today, Zac Efron’s house does something important: it brings industrial hemp into a global conversation with a kind of visibility few bioconstruction materials ever get. And it does so from a particularly symbolic place: showing how a historically stigmatized plant can also become an ally for creating homes that are more efficient, healthier, and more sustainable.
Gatitafresona, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited
