Other Waterfeatures (from birdbaths to lakes)
I may be revealing a professional bias here, but ozone is fascinating stuff. In nature, it's among the most essential chemicals on the planet, existing most prominently as a gaseous component of our upper atmosphere. Formed there by sunlight's reaction with atmospheric oxygen, it collectively constitutes the famous Ozone Layer that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet rays and is crucial to the very existence of life on earth. Closer to the ground, ozone is widely used across a broad spectrum of applications. It's well known in the pool and spa market as a water sanitizer, for example, either as a chlorine alternative or an adjunct. It's also widely used in food processing and municipal drinking and wastewater treatment systems and plays key roles in the production of cosmetics and with air freshening and purification systems. For all that, one of the most interesting applications of ozone-generating systems in the past 20 years - and the subject of this article - is the use of ozone in the life-support systems for aquatic animals held in captivity or for
When you ask people about transparent building materials, most people immediately think of glass. Glass is certainly stronger than most people realize, but it has never been an ideal structural material because of its weight, brittleness and structural limitations. With our acrylic products, by contrast, architects and other designers have found a material with which they can create substantial transparent structures that are much lighter and more versatile than those made with glass – and with a structural strength more than double that of concrete. R-Cast acrylic (as we call it) is indeed an amazing material: Its uses span from the obvious pools, fountains or aquariums to awesome signage and seemingly impossible structures and lighting (to mention a few possibilities). Its combination of optical clarity with safety, strength, flexibility and UV resistance has allowed an increasing numbers of designers across a range of disciplines to embrace the material as never before. There are several firms that provide acrylic materials to the construction marketplace, with
In a real sense, I want to build antiques: My goal in designing and shaping water walls has always been to develop systems of beauty that will be around and appreciated decades or even centuries from now. Not only are they built to the highest standards of quality - as are many antiques - but they're also meant to hold running water year after year. I don't know who created the first water wall, but my best guess is that they've been produced in one form or another since the late 1960s or early '70s. I became aware of them in the early '80s, at which point a number of craftspeople were making them from stone, copper, and bronze. Some of these products aspired to be works of sculptural art, but for the most part I thought that the medium's artistic potential hadn't been fully explored or expressed. My idea at the time was to expand the concept with respect to shapes, sizes, materials and styles. I also wanted to check into the possibilities of combining
In a real sense, I want to build antiques: My goal in designing and shaping water walls has always been to develop systems of beauty that will be around and appreciated decades or even centuries from now. Not only are they built to the highest standards of quality - as are many antiques - but they're also meant to hold running water year after year. I don't know who created the first water wall, but my best guess is that they've been produced in one form or another since the late 1960s or early '70s. I became aware of them in the early '80s, at which point a number of craftspeople were making them from stone, copper, and bronze. Some of these products aspired to be works of sculptural art, but for the most part I thought that the medium's artistic potential hadn't been fully explored or expressed. My idea at the time was to expand the concept with respect to shapes, sizes, materials and styles. I also wanted to check into the possibilities of combining
The very existence of floating islands seems counterintuitive. Are there really chunks of earth solid enough to support our weight while drifting over the surface of a body of water? Can these floating masses even support the weight of trees, animals or even human dwellings? The fact is that floating islands do exist on six of the seven continents and sometimes on the oceans between. Some do have trees growing on them and do support the weight of humans (and even grazing cattle). Some are, in fact, hundreds of feet across and are called "home" by their inhabitants. These naturally occurring, waterborne vessels embody a fascinating subset of natural observation and are generally unknown - even though they
The latest generation of Las Vegas hotels and casinos offers an amazing showcase for pools, fountains and watershapes of every shape and size. In fact, for many such properties, the presence of these increasingly imaginative watershapes is crucial to defining their appeal for huge numbers of guests and visitors. As these properties and their watershapes have become more elaborate and unconventional, they've presented designers, engineers and builders with greater and greater technical challenges - many of them carried in the plain fact that water can inflict a great deal of damage on these facilities if it is not properly contained and controlled. In our end of the watershaping trades, the visual and sensory arms race has challenged the waterproofing industry to step up to the plate and manage the integrity of every nook and cranny of every vessel, be it wide or narrow, curved or straight, below-grade or
All artists and designers have to come from somewhere, creatively speaking. In our case, we came to watershaping via the world of glass arts and crafts, a starting place that led us first to create unusual sculptures in glass and light - and then to carry our work out into landscapes and especially into settings that feature water. In collaborating mostly with architects and landscape architects and designers, we at SWON Design in Montreal have found what we believe to be an incredibly rich vein of aesthetic potential. Indeed, we have come through the years to recognize with greater and greater profundity that water
I'm particularly interested in the behavior of water. To me as a sculptor, differing water flows and their textures are like "colors" to a painter: I find a color that holds meaning for me and then look for a structural form that can present it. To this extent, my artistic medium is the behavior of water and the means to make it behave. The sculpture in this case is water combined with a structure in steel, stone and equipment. The work is abstract: abstractions of feelings related to the movement of people, animals, fish and the flows of water in streams, rivers, rain - even the flow of numbers. As a result, I need metaphors and feelings to drive my creative expressions, then use water and other sculptural elements in much the same way a choreographer might use line and gesture to express a feeling or a composer will use chord changes and musical phrasing. My hope is that, in creating forms that are meaningful to me, other
So often, the art and science of invention begins with the study and appreciation of nature. While growing up in Wisconsin, I was repeatedly exposed to the naturally occurring islands often found floating on bodies of water amid the conifers in the northern, peat-bog region of the state. I couldn't help noticing that these islands were exactly the best places to go fishing. They were just terrific, presenting a structure under and around which fish, for whatever reason, loved to spend their time. Moreover, every floating island I've seen in nature is host to all sorts of flowering plants including American Speedwell, Monkey Flower, Blue Flag and even examples of the few native varieties of North American wild orchids along with incredible varieties of other broad-leaf plants, grasses and even trees. In many cases, I've seen species that don't abound in the surrounding environment but
The Chicago Botanic Garden is located, oddly enough, a good 40 miles from that city in the suburb of Glencoe, Ill. And although it is specifically named for the Midwest’s greatest city and might seem a municipal endeavor, it is actually maintained by private donations and serves to display the entire region’s rich flora and scenic beauty. The garden is organized around a large body of water known as the Great Basin, which was created some 60 years ago by dredging the area and diverting the Skokie River to create a series of islands and lagoons. The largest island, known as Evening Island, was the initial focus of our work in redesigning the space. My firm, Oehme, van Sweden and Associates of Washington, D.C., became involved in the project
