Designing the Dream House of an 87-Year-Old Tech Visionary
Jun 16, 2026 10:00 AM
An icon of Silicon Valley’s counterculture, Stewart Brand is confronting his final years in a home that embodies the self-sufficient, DIY ethos of his famous Whole Earth Catalog.
This past January, Stewart Brand published a book, Maintenance of Everything: Part One. “Maintenance is what keeps everything going,” he begins. “It’s what keeps life going.”
Brand’s life has been going for 87 years, but lately the going has been tough. The man known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog—the 1960s countercultural guide to self-sufficiency that Steve Jobs was fond of—has an incurable disease and is down to 130 pounds, an alarming weight for a nearly 6-footer. Brand’s mind is sharp as ever; you can’t talk to the man for five minutes without learning something. But his once-nimble movements are now cautious, and he’s never far from an oxygen tank. Stewart Brand’s body, in...
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