Fountains
Splash pads have jumped in popularity by bringing fun to a variety of public spaces. But there's one key factor to keep in mind in their design and installation, writes Chris Thomas, that helps these inviting, entertaining features serve the broadest possible spectrum of visitors. Creating inclusive play areas is a priority for parks, aquatic facilities and other public places where people gather. From the watershaping perspective, it's part of a current trend in which many recreation departments, homeowner associations, and community centers are installing
Back in the 1960s there was a sign on a road entering Alaska that read, "Choose your rut carefully - you will be in it for the next 200 miles." Changing lanes in business can be stressful and risky, but sometimes it's the wisest choice because the road you're on could be leading nowhere. That's what happened to our company, Laughing Waters. I started out in the pond business as a teenager and for years we were full-speed ahead installing naturalistic water features, including ponds, streams
Station Park is a modern mix of upscale retail, dining and entertainment venues with more than 1.2 million square feet of commercial space. It includes an event venue, health center, luxury hotel, ice rink, 14-screen movie theater - and a dazzling outdoor show fountain. Our company, Fountain People (San Marcos, Texas), worked closely with developers and designers on the way to creating a world-class, choreographed water feature that provides a unique and exciting experience every hour on the hour. The fountain dances to the music of popular artists, old and new, with a
It's a fact: Creating large watershapes for international clients is enough to send a project team's stress levels off the charts. You start with all the usual pressures of time, money and prestige that go along with performing on the global level. Then there are cultural differences, not to mention local environmental concerns having to do with water usage. And these factors can give you trouble even when you think you know what you're getting yourself into. Through the years, our company has learned many lessons about the importance of accommodating the cultural and economic overtones of what we do. From our base in Toronto, Crystal Fountains pursues projects the world over and always strives to
As a company that's been around for many years in the landscape and pool trades, we knew as we expanded our offerings to include fountain restoration, design and installation that experience and contacts would eventually lead to referrals. What's been unexpected given our past work with mainly residential clients is that fact that our fountain referrals have come in bunches as we work with developers and architects and get involved in
It's the nature of the game: One of the great sources of pride for any good watershaping business has to do with its ability to find solutions to difficult challenges - a new way to achieve something familiar when the established or conventional approach won't work, for example, or dealing with site constraints that repeatedly send you back to the drawing board. That's the sort of pride we had coming out of our work on the Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain and its accompanying splash pad at Grand Park in Los Angeles, and it was intensified by the fact that this was the restoration of a 60-year-old fountain that had originally been built with an entirely different approach from anything we'd consider today - but whose physical constraints we couldn't
For most of my professional life, I've worked on projects in which the dominant color is green. With the project under discussion here, however, both the client and the setting called for something quite different. As I knew going in, the property, located in Northridge, Calif., is both a residence and a place of business, so on any given workday multiple cars and trucks invade the space and need convenient places to park. But while this primary use of a plaza-scale space as a parking pad suited clients' business needs, it was plainly too dusty and downright bleak to offer any
With any watershape renovation project, there's a great deal of anticipation of what you'll discover once the system is dismantled to whatever degree or level is necessary. In some cases, all is well and the process of reworking structures and systems unfolds smoothly. In others, however, there are surprises that can take your breath away. This was one of those "other" cases - the restoration of an historic fountain that had been in place since 1958 as well as the upgrading of an adjacent space to accommodate a splash pad for interactive play and provide a stage for
This story starts with a tree falling in the forest. It wasn't just any tree: It was a huge locust that had stood next to what is now my driveway for years beyond reckoning, and when it came down it did its best to take a tangle of utility lines with it. I wasn't there when all of this happened, but I returned soon thereafter and saw the lingering effects: The utility companies had done a wonderful job of cutting away portions of the tree that had fallen onto the wires and had effectively cleared the road, but
Through the past few years, certain parts of Idaho have seen large influxes of people from California, some of them seeking more bucolic lifestyles, others heading into retirement and still others looking for places where taxes are lower than they are in the Golden State. As it turns out, these folks have been transplanting more than just their personal hopes and dreams, with pieces of California culture following them wherever they go. They're arriving in cities like Boise with preferences in mind as well as the resources required to make
