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GENERAL SESSION
Saturday, November 1
8:30am-9:30am
Morial Convention Center

A meeting badge is required to enter this session.

In previous years, ASLA has used this general session as a platform for keynote speakers who provide a different perspective from landscape architecture while still having a connection to the profession and its interests. Maintaining this tradition, ASLA proudly presents Steve Thomas from the television show This Old House as its keynote speaker for this session. His use of landscape architects throughout the years has set him apart from the many other home improvement hosts and speaks to his appreciation for the profession. A recent issue of This Old House Magazine focused on how landscape architecture can increase property values and recommended contacting ASLA to find a landscape architect.

Steve Thomas has divided his career among the renovation of historic buildings, writing, and sailing. In June 1989, This Old House executive producer Russell Morash selected him from a pool of more than 400 applicants to be host of the popular public television series. “Steve was the dream candidate: intelligent, attractive, articulate, and an accomplished home restorer in the bargain,” says Morash. His role as the ultimate “home enthusiast” has endeared him to viewers for the past 13 years. In 1998, Steve won his first Emmy.

Now 50, Steve got his start in house renovation as a child, working with his father fixing up the series of old houses the family owned. In 1974 he undertook his first renovation project--a 1920s residence in Olympia, Washington. Since then, among other projects, he has renovated an 1836 Colonial Revival and an 1846 Greek Revival residence in a historic district north of Boston.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Steve combined his love of fine woodworking with his passion for the sea. He was first mate of a 100-foot wooden schooner in Greece, worked as a marine carpenter in France, and sailed a 43-foot wooden sloop from England to San Francisco via the Caribbean, Marquesas, and Hawaii. Steve made his public television debut in The Last Navigator, which first aired on the Adventure series in July 1989. Both the program and the book of the same title (International Marine 1997) are an account of his apprenticeship to Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug, who taught him the secrets of navigating without instruments, using only stars, waves, and birds.

He is the author of This Old House Kitchens and This Old House Bathrooms, published by Little Brown. His most recent book is the Homeowner’s Manual published by Time Publishing Ventures, Inc. A native of California, Steve received his BA degree in philosophy from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He is an accomplished photographer and a member of the Authors’ Guild and the East India Marine Society. Steve lives with his wife and son in a 19th-century house he constantly renovates in a seaport outside Boston.