ARTICLES Archives - Page 115 of 312

Preventing Plaster Dust

For more than 50 years, lots of swimming pool builders, plasterers and service technicians have operated under the assumption that the plaster dust they commonly see during the first two weeks after plaster application is normal, unavoidable and acceptable. None of that is

Ripples #97

Congressman's Tongue-in-Cheek Idea: Install a Truth-Testing Swimming Pool

The Directory Is Back!

I have the great pleasure of announcing that another major service for users of the WaterShapes.com web site is now fully up and running in streamlined digital form: The WaterShapes Resource Directory, which we last published as a printed document in December 2010 and have been updating

It's not often that a designer gets to return to a past project and update it for new owners. But that was the opportunity Raymond Jungles was offered with this property -- a Mid-Century Modern showplace in the Florida Keys.

A Private Paradise, Revisited

In many ways, this project is a study in personalities: of the original clients, of the home's architecture and, ultimately, of subsequent owners who purchased the property and called me back to it years after my initial work had been completed. The first time through, the owners were close friends of mine. We had remarkably similar tastes, so my basic charge was to do exactly what I thought needed to be done, much as if it were my own home. The house is a beautiful example of Mid-Century Modern, a style that fits well in the special environs of the Florida Keys. But when I first visited the site, I could tell that someone had tried to turn it into

Sustaining Sustainability

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Sustainability may be a hot buzzword in the world of landscaping these days, but Bruce Zaretsky is no Johnny Appleseed-come-lately to the concept. According to Zaretsky — owner of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design, installation and consulting firm near Rochester, New York, and a frequent contributor to the pages of WaterShapes — he's been concerned with sustainability throughout his entire landscaping career. "I've always tried to be careful with resources and less invasive to the environment," Zaretsky says. "For instance, whenever I would replace a brick patio for a client, I'd never throw out the old bricks; I'd always leave them at the road, on a wood palette, so other people could take them. The palettes themselves — I'd either

Chatting with ‘The Pond Guy’

An Interview by Lenny Giteck When Greg Wittstock built his first watergarden in his family's backyard at the ripe old age of 12, it was designed to provide a home for his pet turtles. Unfortunately, his treasured pets were not all that appreciative of a residence that leaked and had green water, so they fled the scene. He wound up ripping out and rebuilding the pond

Upper-Crust Ponds

An Interview by Lenny Giteck From a very young age, Steve Sandalis was fascinated by natural waterfeatures — an early interest that years later led him to found his watershaping company, Mystic Water Gardens. The Encino, Calif.-based business has prospered mainly by designing and building high-end waterfeatures for the wealthy elite of Los Angeles, including major figures in the entertainment industry. Many of Mystic's projects, which mostly come through word-of-mouth referrals, have carried six-figure price tags, including one that ran

Shimmering Glass

An Interview by Lenny Giteck David Knox has spent much of his adult life analyzing and manipulating light. In 1983, he founded a company called Directed Light, which invented and produced laser systems for many of the nation's A-list technology outfits — including General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Boston Scientific. In 1998, he sold Directed Light to a larger Japanese firm. "I decided to sell the laser company for two reasons," he recalls. "One, I had reached my highest level of incompetence in terms of being a manager, and I really wasn't having a whole lot of

Building the Playboy Mansion Pool

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Some the most iconic images of the past four decades have been photos of bikini-clad Playmates splashing around in the swimming pool or lounging in the adjoining grotto of the Playboy Mansion West, in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles. When Hugh Hefner purchased the 5.2-acre property in 1971, it included a staid, 29-room "Gothic-Tudor" house (as Forbes magazine described it). Through the years, however, the Playboy founder has invested a reported $15 million to transform the place into a

WaterShapers from Outer Space

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Since 1971 when they jointly founded The Dirsmith Group, an architecture, landscaping and engineering firm headquartered in Highland Park, Ill., Ron and Suzanne Dirsmith have established a distinguished track record of designing imaginative structures and environments that often pay homage to the beauty of nature — particularly the element of water. In the late 1950s, just four years after completing his architecture and engineering studies, Ron became a Fellow in Architecture of the American Academy in Rome, a highly prestigious research and study center for