Author, curator, art director of Muji, and renowned designer, Kenya Hara. Acclaimed architect and 2014 Pritzker Prize-winner, Shigeru Ban. Visionary architect and designer of London’s famed Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Sou Fujimoto. They’re just a few of the participants in the new book, Pet-tecture: Design for Pets. Would now be the appropriate time to say that design has gone to the dogs?
It’s also gone to the cats and the birds and the fish and the horses, too, if we’re using Pet-tecture’s 200+ showy examples as a guide. Truth be told, the book, with its pretty pictures of pretty things designed for pets (and pet-lovers), is endemic of an industry trend that goes beyond a cool, suspended cat bed here and an eye-popping fish tank there. It’s all about the pampered pet today—a trend so pervasive that homebuilders and developers—and even high-end rentals that once all-but-shunned anyone that didn’t walk upright—are essentially rolling out the grass (and, often, faux grass) carpet.
Appealing to pet-lovers isn’t just sweet; it’s also smart. According to the American Pet Products Association’s most recent National Pet Owners Survey, 68 percent of U.S. households own at least one pet, growth of 22 percent over the past 20 years. That’s approximately 85 million families who consider their pet a part of the family and who, increasingly, have luxury residential options that embrace the whole brood.
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