ARTICLES Archives - Page 103 of 315

Living in Color

'Few things are as important to the aesthetic impression made by swimming pools, spas and other watershapes as the colors you select to use in and around them,' wrote David Tisherman in opening his Details column in the September 2005 issue of WaterShapes. 'Take tile as an example. Whether it's just a waterline detail, a complete interior finish or some elaborate mosaic pattern, it serves to draw the eye into a design. If the color and material selections work, the scene can become

Winter’s Work

For many years, Bruce Zaretsky faced the annual need to generate enough income to keep his business and his staff going through New York's long, cold winters. Here's a look at few of the most successful sidelines he found in his quest to keep the seasonal wolves at bay. As you read this, some of us in upstate New York are already thinking about

My Digital Confession

It all started at the Orlando pool expo last November, when Noah Nehlich stopped by the WaterShapes booth toward the end of the show and asked how we might work together. He's the founder of Structure Studios (which produces the Pool Studio software system), and I have to admit that I'd never been terribly receptive to the concept of digital design. At that point, in fact, I was still so

#20: Organic Spa

I've been working as a watershape designer long enough to have seen big trends emerge and really take hold. It seemed for a while, for example, that vanishing edges came up at some point in just about every initial client conversation. More recently, I've found myself discussing lots of geometric pools - rectangles and various other squared-off perimeters - and that's great, because it gives us plentiful ways to

If you want to bring a dash of visual style and authenticity to a older property, writes Robert Nonemaker, look no further than local infrastructure projects: In older areas, they can supply you with salvaged materials well suited to your clients' driveways, decks and poolscapes.

Salvaged with Care

In recent years, more and more of our clients have asked us to use old hardscape materials on their projects: They love the stuff, they tell us, and they're sold on its aesthetic richness, authenticity and time-tested visual appeal. Living in southeastern Pennsylvania near some of the country's oldest cities gives me the advantage of ready access to these timeless objects - mostly old cobbles, bricks and stone curbing pulled up in the process of infrastructure

Water Emotion

Our early-summer trip to Yellowstone National Park was a revelation to me, pure and simple. As I related in my Travelogue for July 22 (click here), the thing that occurred to me is that the inspiration at Yellowstone comes less from

Wanted: Water Artists

'The way I see it,' wrote Brian Van Bower to start his Aqua Culture column in August 2000, 'we watershapers can look at ourselves in one of two ways: as diggers of holes in the ground that hold water, or as artists working with one of the most exciting mediums on the planet. For a lot of reasons, I like the second of those options, because the first is passive - the sole goal being to contain the water - while the second gets me more

Odds — and Endings

There's no doubt that watershaping took it on the chin in the Great Recession. Some businesses vanished, and those that have persisted are, in many if not most cases, leaner than they were back in 2008 and just different in many respects from what they once were. It's also fair to report, because the economy and

The Aquatic Quiz #31

ISIS Lists Swimming Pool Rules asTemperatures Soar in Mosul, Iraq

Basin Burdens

Pond-free waterfall systems are a conceptual oddity: At first thought, they don't seem as though they can in any way appear natural, with their long streams of cascading water disappearing into voids instead of flowing across the large sort of pond that is so familiar to most of us in natural settings. But I'm among those who like these odd watershapes - and I think much of it has to do with the fact that we