ARTICLES Archives - Page 106 of 317

#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

For someone who started out as a pool designer who never visited his clients' backyards, Jeromey Naugle has come a long, long way -- and knows how important a part digital technology has played in his progress as a professional 'paradise expert.'

Rising Aspiration

Back in 2001, I took a job working for a high-volume pool-construction firm as one of its 30 salespeople. For the first four years or so, I did all of my design work by hand. Quantity was always king in that operation, so I never even left the office: Someone would hand me a set of plans and I'd start working, despite the fact I'd never walked the site, seen its surroundings or had any

The Necessity of Restraint

'Everywhere you turn these days,' wrote David Tisherman to start his Details column in August 2005, 'you see watershapers tackling projects that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.' 'With this broadening list of possibilities, however, . . . [t]he industry's like a teenager with a fresh driver's license: just because he or she knows how doesn't necessarily mean that

Priced Out

Something has been nagging at the edges of my consciousness for a while now, and I think it's high time to write about it. One of my duties for the past several years has been to roam the Internet to find stories related to pools and all sorts of other watershapes and decide whether a given item merits your attention. From the start, I noticed but did not share a whole class of items related to