Landscape architecture trend spotter

The Jan. 11 real estate page at MarketWatch.com — a Web site that reels in 7.5 million visitors and 213 million page views each month — leads off with a few stats from a survey of real estate agents about current preferences among new home buyers. About 44 percent of agents surveyed said they’ve had clients who want a home theater, 26 percent ran into clients who wanted exercise rooms, and 93 percent had worked with clients who wanted a home office in their new digs. The story goes on to say that “homeowners aren’t restricting their wants to indoor features,” and that “according to a separate survey of the American Society of Landscape Architect [ASLA] members ... outdoor kitchens and fire pits, as well as outdoor ‘great rooms,’ were spotted as trends for 2008.”

The quest for an authoritative source for theories behind the trends in home landscaping brought the MarketWatch.com real estate writer to the ASLA President — and coordinator of the SAES Landscape Architecture Program — Perry Howard. Howard was quoted by MarketWatch.com as saying that "Homeowners are reconnecting with their outdoor space, often in creative and imaginative ways."

Howard moved up from president-elect to president at the 18,000-member ASLA’s annual meeting in October of 2007. One of Howard’s upcoming presidential commitments, in early May, is to serve as commencement speaker for the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Posted January 23, 2008 04:39 PM

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