Aquatic Culture | Watershapes

The web site for all professionals and consumers who've made or want to make water a part of their lives

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Photo courtesy Selective Designs, Atlanta, Ga.
Photo courtesy Crystal Fountains, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Photo courtesy Laughing Waters, Palos Heights, Ill.
Photo courtesy Aquatic Consultants, Miami, Fla.
Photo courtesy Colorado Hardscapes, Denver, Colo.
Photo courtesy New Leaf Landscape, Agoura Hills, Calif.
Photo courtesy Drakeley Pool Co., Bethlehem, Conn.
Photo courtesy Mystic Water Gardens, Encino, Calif.

A True Cliffhanger

Swimming pool designs have come a long way in recent years, says design and project manager Ron Yavis of Sunshine Pools & Spas – particularly when it comes to the high-end, custom-designed, vinyl-liner pools the company specializes in designing and building for some of the continent’s most spectacular settings. To make his case for ‘custom vinyl,’ he profiles a recent project perched high above the bright waters of Canada’s Lake Okanagan.

Changing Spaces

Taking a chance with someone who wasn't yet his client, Skip Phillips sketched up an alternative to a proposed pool renovation and ended up completely transforming a large backyard space. It was suddenly a major project -- and then came a long list of ef

Remaking a Classic

Restoring the pool and adding a spa to a classic Mid-Century Modern home took care and restraint, observes Jimmy Reed, But his task was made easier by an insightful, cooperative client with excellent tastes, a eye for detail and a healthy spirit of adventure.

Beneath the Shell

It's been an honor to restore the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle, writes Matthew Reynolds. But working under its shell posed multiple challenges, from cramped spaces and hard-to-track piping runs to the constant awareness they were tinkering with a precio

In Pursuit of Art

In 2008, William Drakeley was at a crossroads and saw this big, uniquely challenging project as a way to separate himself from the crowd. lt was a bit more than he bargained for, but he persisted -- and knows that making it all work changed the regional perception of his business.

A Story in Stone

Through the years, Dave Garton's experience in designing and building naturalistic and architectural watershapes has led him into several situations in which his clients have wanted to use a special heirloom or artifact of some kind as a key design element in a project under discussion.

Color Clashes

If you don't prepare your clients for what will almost certainly happen to the appearance of this flashy form of decking and coping, writes Paolo Benedetti, you can find yourself facing unpleasant consequences -- from encounters with peevish homeowners to

Moving in Styles

Watershape and landscape artists Kate Wiseman and Keith Lowry have staked out a unique niche for themselves by emphasizing a ‘client-driven’ approach to design in which their firm takes its cues entirely from homeowners’ needs and desires. The result has been a remarkably diverse portfolio of high-caliber residential projects – work that defies easy categorization, as demonstrated by the collection of beautiful photographs they share here.

Microbes Rule!

For as long as liquid water has supported life on our planet, a range of factors have played dynamic roles in sustaining balanced, untreated, wholly natural lakes and ponds, observes inventor and researcher Bruce Kania. By breaking things down and understanding the relationships between microbes and nutrients in water, he adds, watershapers are better able to mimic nature and create watershapes that will stay clean and clear without artificial treatment.

Neat and Clean

Always a stickler for details, Brian Van Bower used his Aqua Culture column in August 2003 to define what he considered to be a crucial and very public measure of a watershaper's professionalism.

Imported Genius

Downtown Los Angeles is filling up with interesting attractions, notes Jim McCloskey, but that shouldn't mean overlooking Pershing Square, which features an amazing watershape by Ricardo Legorreta.

Architectural Thought

Considering design in brand-new ways. Book Notes includes reviews of a wide variety of publications hand-selected by a professional watershaper/landscape designer who sees their relevance in his life and work.

CRYSTAL FOUNTAINS VIDEO SHOWCASE

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New Products at Watershapes.com

The Muse Collection from Oceanside Glasstile

Construction Systems & Materials
Product information from Oceanside Glasstile on the Muse Collection of mosaic glass tile.

Pool/Spa Systems & Equipment
Product information from Speck Pumps on the Badu Block Multi, a vertically mounted pump for pools, fountains and waterfeatures

Pool/Spa Systems & Equipment
Product information from Hayward Pool Products on the CAT 6000 water-chemistry controller.

Versa-Lok Makes Plantable Retaining Walls

Landscape/Hardscape Materials & Equipment
Product information from Versa-Lok Retaining Wall Systems on Versa-Green, its plantable wall segments

Vortex Offers a Low-Flow Waterplay System

Other Watershape Systems & Equipment
Product information from Vortex Aquatic Structures Int'l on its SprayPoint low-flow waterplay system.

FX Luminaire Offers Compact Underwater Lights

Pond/Stream Systems & Equipment
Product information from FX Luminaire on its compact model LP submersible LED lighting fixtures

Merited Attention

WaterShapes World (blog)
An unexpectedly large flurry of recent media features on the beauty, splendor and significance of swimming pools set Jim McCloskey to conjecturing about factors behind the uptick. It's all good news, he thinks, but he suspects it's a story that will keep