Commentaries, Interviews & Profiles
Interview by Jim McCloskeyMark Holden smiles a lot these days, happy with the progress he, David Tisherman and a group of fellow instructors have made in the very short time they’ve been organizing a new educational program. That program, called Artistic Resources & Training – or ART for short – is a spinoff of his years of trying to make the study of watershapes part of the curriculum taught to students of landscape architecture in American universities. Holden is a perpetual-motion machine these days, pulling together
Late in 2001, WaterShapes columnist Brian Van Bower wrote passionately about innovation and the value he saw in pursuing trends, accepting change and moving steadily forward. As we stand at another set of crossroads a decade later, the foundation he defined back then has
Back in the November/December 2001 issue of WaterShapes, David Tisherman wrote a manifesto urging pool-industry professionals as well as watershapers from related trades to elevate their games – especially with respect to matters of design and presentation. ‘Here’s the unvarnished truth,’
In 2001, as part of his ‘Aqua Culture’ column in WaterShapes, Brian Van Bower penned a thought-provoking piece entitled “Quality Don’t Come Easy.” In it, he decried what he saw as a dearth of quality craftspeople in the watershaping trades — and in the broader construction industry as well. “Time and again,” he noted, “I commiserate with colleagues who just can’t find good people who are dedicated to
In the first installment of this two-part opinion piece, watershaper and educator Mark Holden offered a scathing critique of what he views as the traditional pool industry. To read Part One in its entirety, click here. In the second installment of his two-part opinion piece, Holden offers
A few years ago, I made a conscious effort to turn my back on the narrow confines of the swimming pool industry and to focus instead on the profession of watershaping and its significantly broader foundation and expressive potential. It was a transition pushed both by
If you asked ten people to rank which was more important in their lives, I’d say seven or eight of them would reflexively say that physical health is more important than success in business. If you’re not healthy, the reasoning goes, there’s no way to enjoy the fruits of success. These people also recognize that being robust and healthy gives you a better shot at
Let’s begin this discussion with a question: What if you were so bad at your job that a person in a related field decided, for the good of his own business, he had to learn your business and replace you rather than cope with your incompetence? Most people would say that this would be a justified response to the fact that you do lousy work. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), this very thing is happening in the pool industry – or, more accurately, to the pool industry. For years now and with increasing frequency, landscape architects have decided they’ve had enough and are entering the pool industry. They are doing so because
An Interview by Lenny Giteck In the six years since Dr. Tom Lachocki became CEO of the National Swimming Pool Foundation, NSPF has given more than $3.5 million in grant money for scientific research into aquatics, a figure that represents
A Fresh Approach to Plaster Colors