Zac Efron teams up with Joost Bakker to build 'healthiest home on the planet'

Joost Bakker, once described by The New York Times as “the poster boy of zero-waste living”, attracts all kinds of interesting movers and shakers into his pioneering orbit.

But lately, one particularly well-known friend, The Iron Claw actor Zac Efron, has been keeping the creative Melburnian busy as they work on the movie star’s dream six-bedroom off-grid home an hour from Byron Bay.

“It’s not every day of the week that @zacefron asks you to design his home; I am beyond excited!” Bakker posted on Instagram.

The florist, eco-activist, zero-waste restaurateur and designer has been given free rein to test his out-of-the-box ideas on the property, such as using hemp, building rooftop gardens that will help local species, and utilising all-natural materials, including oyster shells.

“He really wants it to be the healthiest home on the planet,” Bakker says.

The local council has approved the plans, so construction of the celebrity’s home, in the tiny town of Tomewin in NSW’s Northern Rivers region, is due to kick off early next year. 

It will include a gym, as well as six bedrooms and six bathrooms to accommodate friends and family who drop by

“It’s quite modest, really, for a home that a celebrity would build,” Bakker says.

The home will sit on the acreage that Efron, who spent time in Byron Bay during the COVID pandemic, reportedly bought in late 2020 for $2 million.

Bakker says the entire house will be covered with plants, which will allow insects, such as fireflies, to thrive.

Creating those little ecosystems on the building’s flat roofs, which also hold rainwater, is what he’s most excited and proud about. 

“We’re using the building to get a lot of endangered insects and species back on track,” Bakker says. “So we can actually use the building to create habitat rather than take away from it.” 

Efron and the Dutch-born designer first met when the actor visited one of Bakker’s projects, futurefoodsystem, a no-waste eco-house in Melbourne’s Federation Square. Later, the star spent time at Bakker’s family home in Monbulk, in the Dandenong Ranges. 

A chance meeting between Bakker and the actor’s brother Dylan – while the designer was in California hanging out with Kanye West – spurred the pair to reconnect, and eventually start planning Efron’s epic eco-friendly home.

Bakker says that after spending much of his life living in hotel rooms, Efron has spoken of putting down roots in NSW.

“He’s just looking for a place that he can call home and come back and recharge and grow his own food and all that sort of stuff,” he says.

In what is perhaps a blessing for someone of Efron’s fame, Bakker says that Tomewin is a very small, private rural community. 

“It’s funny, most people don’t even know who he is,” Bakker says.

“He’s a super nice guy. He just loves the Australian mentality and attitude, and he just wants to spend time in nature.”

Bakker says part of Efron’s instructions were not to cut a single tree down, and to push his eco-friendly creativity to the max.

As part of that, crops such as hemp will be used extensively in the build.

“You can harvest in 100 days from a hemp crop that is grown from a seed, what would take 17 years to harvest in a forest,” Bakker says.

“And what that crop actually does is it actually restores soil biology and soil health.”

Bakker also used hemp in another recent project at Woodleigh School in Langwarrin South, on Melbourne’s urban fringe, which has just won a Victorian Premier’s Design Award.

“We’ve made the desks and the joinery and the doors – everything was made out of Australian-grown hemp,” says Bakker, who worked on the project with architecture firm McIldowie Partners.

Bakker says being passionate about zero waste has led him to meet and work with some “incredible people” over the years.

He tips his hat to those who test the limits, despite others’ nerves about unusual ideas or technology.

“So in my opinion, that principal is a hero, and so’s Zac and so is Ye [Kanye West], or all these people that are frustrated that these ideas are still not mainstream, even though I’ve been banging on about them for so long,” Bakker says.