Cross Connections

Eric Herman

As I see it, watershaping is an activity in which multiple disciplines come together to design, engineer and construct decorative or recreational systems that contain and control water: pools and spas, fountains, ponds, streams and waterfalls, interactive water systems – “everything from birdbaths to lakes,” as publisher Jim McCloskey is relentlessly fond of saying.

Those multiple disciplines encompass landscape architects and designers, pool designers and builders, architects, interior designers, environmental artists and a host of subtrades as well as adherents of various movements, from historic preservationists to professionals in the green industries.

It’s a broad and exciting amalgam of interests, and my sense is that, as time passes and creative people from still other disciplines see the practical and aesthetic potentials of watershaping, our new industry will only become more encompassing and inclusive.

Case in point: In March 2011, Jim and I attended the annual Concrete Decor Show in Nashville, Tenn. This was our second time at the event as exhibitors, and we made the trip because we recognize the creativity decorative concrete specialists bring to the table in the design and installation of exterior environments. More important, we also see them as potential creative collaborators.

On both occasions, we’ve enjoyed the opportunity to observe and converse with professionals whose collective experience through the past decade has mirrored what’s been happening with watershaping. Both are fields that, at the highest levels, are now clearly driven by passion, craftsmanship, artistry and the desire to push creative boundaries.

What intrigued us most is the fact that so many of these decorative concrete folks are so keenly interested in including water as part of their compositions, seeing their medium and ours as hand-in-glove companions. We were peppered with questions about waterproofing (by far their overriding concern), water quality and hydraulics and had the sense that they were determined to figure out the best possible ways to bridge the conceptual gap between what they do and what we do.

In quieter moments at our booth, Jim and I regularly discussed how both watershapers and decorative concrete specialists would benefit from making broader connections between the two disciplines. A bit of the potential was seen in seminars led by watershapers Paolo Benedetti and Scott Cohen – frequent contributors to this magazine who encountered enthusiastic audiences overflowing with questions.

We’re all for encouraging these connections. To that end, some of you may have noticed articles in recent issues by decorative concrete professionals (Fu-Tung Cheng in March 2011, Tommy T. Cook in November 2010) as well as informative features on waterproofing (by Michael Mudrick and Elena Danke in January 2011 and by J.B. Werner in this issue). We’ve also been collaborating with Concrete Decor, the magazine that staged the Nashville show, to bring a range of decorative concrete-oriented articles to our newsletters and web site in recent months.

In doing so, we’ve cracked the door onto a new realm of possibilities – a place in which concrete is a startlingly plastic material that can be made to look like just about anything you could imagine and one in which a common, familiar material meets its fuller artistic potential. If you think about it, that one sentence also tells the story of watershaping through the past ten years: Both are fields in which vision, energy and creativity have conspired across disciplinary lines to result in something fresh, original and authentic.

It’s all very cool.