ARTICLES Archives - Page 151 of 312

Texas-Scale Energy

Let’s journey to the Lone Star State once again to see an appropriately grand-scale waterfeature – and another exuberant collaboration between renowned architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, who also devised the Fort Worth Water Gardens highlighted in the January 25, 2012 edition of this newsletter. This time, we’ll stop downstate in Houston to see the monumental Williams Waterwall in

Digging and More Digging

Sometimes you think you have everything breaking your way: large job site, easy access and free rein to design and build a great and beautiful project. But even in these dream cases, you can run into the unexpected from time to time. That certainly was true of the project examined in this video. The property is located in a

Test Your Knowledge #34

New Push to Promote Swimming Lessons for Minority Kids in U.S.

Ripples #45

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck ‘Swimming Pool’ Is One Delightful Animated Short with a Surprise Twist

Every Day Is Halloween

Consider the way I spent my time yesterday: I had breakfast in an upscale eatery to discuss teaching a class. I went through a phone interview with a publication’s editor. I hung up the phone and headed over to a job site I knew would be a total mess after a night that had given us an unexpected inch of rain. Adding to the uncertainty, I was to

Purposeful Travel

Interview by Jim McCloskey When you ask David Tisherman what it takes to design at the highest levels, the answer comes back in a hurry: “Three things,” he says: “education, inspiration and travel.” The first two, he observes, come from hard work in classrooms; close observation of design precedent and the setting; and having an open, inquisitive mind when it comes to sizing up the client and the client’s capacity to get

Up, Up and Away!

As I indicated earlier this year, we at WaterShapes have dedicated ourselves to making our newsletter and Web site bigger, better and more helpful than ever. We’ve increased the volume and frequency of original newsletter articles and features, gotten involved in raising the level of education in our industry and organized everything we do to make solid information accessible in ways that

Chutes and Ladders

The first two videos in this sequence were about access, and this one is, too – but with a difference. Where the other projects challenged us with tight access, and we had to figure out ways to take care of the excavation spoils on relatively level lots, this one is a case where we were able to take advantage of

Lighting the Way

As I mentioned in the first of this series of articles, I initially became involved with the art of concealment when a client showed me an interior room’s lighting system that was activated by touching a kickplate hidden in the floor moldings. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen (or not seen) and set me off on a career-long pursuit of

The Hidden Source (pdf version)

Cascades and waterfalls are different from most other types of watershapes. In ponds, for example, the quiet reflective surface of the water serves to accentuate elements within the water, such as the plants, fish and rock materials, while reflecting the features surrounding it. That same reflectivity is a hallmark of pools as well. Our purpose in setting up cascades and waterfalls is, by contrast, to highlight the water itself, and specifically the