Speaking at Custom Home’sDirections conference in Key Biscayne, Fla., consumer strategist Robin Avni led attendees on an information-rich tour of the baby boom generation’s intense and changing relationship with their homes. Avni, senior director at the consumer research company Iconoculture, defines this much-studied cohort as Americans between the ages of 42 and 64 and notes that, with $2 trillion of buying power, it remains the dominant consumer demographic for custom builders. Avni drew on consumer preference research to map boomers’ evolving concepts of home not only as a structure, but also as a geographical place and a virtual world.
The physical structure of home, Avni says, will center ever more on what she terms the “command center kitchen.” Part of the durably popular great room, the kitchen is rapidly becoming the most wired room in the house, with smart appliances, charging stations for electronic devices, and centralized systems for home management. The cluttered phone desk is disappearing in favor of the wireless-enabled laptop, which can be moved about the room and folded away when not in use. Coming down the pike are digital family calendars and an electronic storage system that can recall any recipe from the cook’s archive and project it on the countertop. Reversing the trend toward stainless steel equipment, appliances are being camouflaged as cabinetry to present an un-kitchen-like appearance from adjacent living spaces.
Other rooms in the house will change along with boomer lifestyles in a customizing process that Avni calls “fingerprinting.” The media room will morph into a gaming room; home offices will proliferate in various parts of the house; and garages will develop into multi-use “man caves.” Green considerations will gradually replace ostentation with a lower-key “eco-chic” aesthetic. Aging baby boomers will require houses adapted to their diminishing physical capabilities, but this design-conscious generation will demand that such adaptations be “inspirational rather than institutional.”
Life-stage changes will also influence boomers’ preference in their geographical sense of home. Those with a single residence will tend to locate near their children and grandchildren; those who can afford a second home will do so with family vacations and eventual retirement in mind. Those without extended families may choose communal arrangements with others of like interests and lifestyles, a phenomenon Avni terms “beehiving.” Electronic communication has spurred a return to rural communities, which offer a lower stress environment for both retirees and families with children. Those same technologies are changing the type of house baby boomers—and, to an even greater extent, members of Generation X and the so-called Millennials—will demand from their builders. Integrated electronic systems for entertainment, safety, and home management will be no less fundamental than plumbing. As much as sticks and bricks and a place on the map, Avni says, “home is where the hub is.”
