Zac Efron Breaks Ground on FutureCave, His Hemp-Built Australian Dream Home

Zac Efron is putting down roots — literally.

The Iron Claw star is turning his passion for the environment into something permanent. Eco-designer Joost Bakker confirmed via Instagram on May 9 that construction on Efron’s long-awaited sustainable Australian home has officially begun. “Excited to get started on Zac’s house!” Bakker wrote in the post, signaling a major milestone for a project years in the making.

Efron, 38, first connected with Bakker in 2021 when he visited the designer’s Future Food Systems installation at Melbourne’s Federation Square during filming of his Netflix series Down to Earth With Zac Efron. According to a 2025 report from the Australian Financial Review, Efron later asked Bakker to design his home, saying that every visit to Bakker’s own space left him with a clear sense of how he ultimately wanted to live.

The project, dubbed FutureCave, sits on a 128-hectare lot in Tomewin, near the New South Wales-Queensland border — about an hour from Byron Bay and 30 minutes from Gold Coast Airport. Efron purchased the block, which features waterfalls, virgin rainforest and 500-year-old cedar trees, for approximately $2 million in 2020, per the report.

Hemp is central to the entire build. According to the outlet, internal bricks, joinery, curtains, pillows and even a custom mattress — made in a one-off collaboration with Sealy — will all be derived from hemp. Efron’s home’s battery system will use sodium-ion technology rather than cobalt or lithium, developed by Australian company PowerCap.

“I was excited about this before 90 percent of these ideas; the original pitch from Joost was already next level, now it’s gotten to a place that it’s potentially the coolest house ever built,” the High School Musical star told the outlet.

Six bedroom pods connected by an outdoor walkway will house Efron’s extended family. A steel frame will support 100 tonnes of dirt for rooftop gardens designed to sustain native butterflies, fireflies and frogs, according to the report.

“I live a pretty fast-paced life and work quite a bit, so in between movies and press tours, my number one goal is always to take time for myself and rest and recharge and to be in nature as much as possible, and as close to the earth as I can, and this land just feels like it’s perfect for that,” he said.

Bakker sees the eco-friendly project as something much larger than one celebrity home. “Zac and I, that’s our dream, make this plant a mainstream crop, not just in Australia but globally,” he said, per the report.