ARTICLES Archives - Page 176 of 317

Test Your Knowledge #5

In what famous Roman city was an ancient statue of a goddess wearing a bikini discovered, and who was the Roman goddess?

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck"Sin City" Adult and Topless Pools Make Big Splash with Tourists "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," as the brilliant marketing slogan says - and apparently for an increasing number of the city's approximately 40 million annual visitors, that extends to Sin City's

Finding Fitness in the Pool

It’s been important to me for two reasons: First, I’m convinced (as others in this magazine have argued) that the watershaping industry is doing both itself and its clients a disservice by not promoting the remarkable healthfulness of aquatic activity. I think this is a deficit we desperately need to address — and also that this effort must begin on a solid base of knowledge and fact. Second, as I progress through my forties, I’m finding that running is becoming more and more difficult because

Pachyderm Posteriors by the Pool

How many times have we seen a pile of artificial rocks plopped on the end or along the side of a freeform pool, left with no visual connection to anything else in the space? The answer, of course, is "countless times" - which prompts a far more important question: why? Why are we still seeing watershapes installed with edges that look to my eyes to be

Beware of Exploding Lava Rocks

In selecting materials, most of us know enough to think about how our choices will work when exposed to water. Only rarely, however, do we think about how those materials will perform when exposed to fire — which is being featured in more and more projects these days — and how they

Inside Total Dissolved Solids

Just how much do swimming pool chemicals add to the total dissolved solids (TDS) content of the water? Do all chemicals of equal amounts (by weight) add identical amounts of TDS to swimming pool water? These are important questions, because elevated TDS levels can

Test Your Knowledge #4

How long can koi live?

Ripples #15

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck Witchcraft and 'Swimming':A Horrific, Always Deadly Test Today we think of swimming as a fun, healthful, refreshing activity, but it was not always so. According to the Web site Suite101.com, a gruesome practice called "swimming" was

Faux-rock specialist John Carlson has spent his career creating artificial structures that deftly fool the eye. Along the way, he’s applied his skills in a various settings, always pushing toward greater levels of complexity no matter whether he’s working with swimming pools, aquariums, decorative features or home interiors. As he demonstrates here, what gets and keeps him going is the flexibility of a material that seems so rigid.

Powers of Imagination

It’s frequently tough to figure out how a person ever finds his or her way into a specific line of work. In my case, for example, I more or less fell into the faux-rock trade, never imagining that what seemed like a blind stumble would ultimately unlock my imagination in a whole range of unexpected ways. It all started when I was working in the oil industry in Alaska in the 1980s. When petroleum prices dropped, I was out of work and moved back to my home town of Tucson, Ariz., where I was hired as a laborer by the Larson Company, which was among the trailblazing firms starting to work in faux rock. I began by mixing concrete and did my fair share of grunt work. As luck would have it, I began showing some artistic promise and in a relatively short time found myself working on major projects and learning the process literally from the ground up. After a couple of hard years, I became a superintendent, a promotion that led to my involvement in major overseas projects, including aquariums in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, as well as an extended stay in Italy. These were wonderful, formative experiences, but eventually I struck out on my own and

As is true of many modern cities, the early development of Anaheim, Calif., was all about its approach to managing water. In the following text and images, watershaper and consultant Mark Holden discusses how this history led recently to the completion of a compact public park in which an unusual watershape graphically demonstrates the way water was harnessed and used in the 19th Century to fuel the region’s agricultural and civic growth.

Artful Education

More than three years ago, I was approached by a talented landscape architect (and good friend) to look at project with an interesting twist: the celebration of the agricultural history of a well-known California city. I’ve long been fascinated by history and have taught the history of art and architecture in a variety of settings, so when Lance Walker (then principal at The Collaborative West, San Clemente, Calif.) called me, I was keenly motivated to hear more about his plan to pay homage to those who had jump-started a major modern community by harnessing a natural watercourse to