ARTICLES Archives - Page 193 of 317

Many watershape and landscape designers will attest to the fact that their best projects are those where no one element stands out among the rest; instead, the entire exterior composition is a balanced integration of beautiful materials and well-chosen features. Take the property shown here as a case in point, suggests Colleen Holmes, who transformed the grounds of a stately home in a historic Los Angeles neighborhood into a space of remarkably subtle beauty.

Graceful Transformation

Everything about this project was classic and beautiful. For one thing, the home has the soft look of a French country chateau. For another, it’s located in Hancock Park, one of the oldest of Los Angeles’ upscale downtown neighborhoods. And when you add in the fact that it sits on a half-acre-plus lot on a quiet street, we had the pleasing sense that we’d landed on a refreshing oasis at the heart of a bustling metropolis. We also enjoyed the privilege of working here with Andres Cardenes, a wonderful architect who had collaborated with these clients on and off for several years. In their latest endeavor, he had come in to refurbish the home along historic and formal lines – something that often happens in this neighborhood, which boasts numerous restored and beautifully maintained homes across a range of architectural styles. Our firm, New Leaf Landscape of Agoura Hills, Calif., had worked with Cardenes on previous projects. When he called, he talked a bit about the situation and let us know that he thought we’d be a great fit because of the way we

When watershaper and landscape artist Anthony Archer Wills was asked to develop a pond/stream system for this historic Wisconsin estate, he saw an opportunity to redefine the scene to befit the grand and glorious setting. Here, in the first of three features on this project, he describes the early stages of his work and a design meant to bring beautiful views and wonderful sounds to spaces dedicated both to children at play and adult delight.

Historic Perspectives

There’s something truly wonderful about working on properties that are in one way or another historic: In a very real sense, they give you a rare opportunity to participate in the past while at the same time you are conceiving and forming a place for the future. This project is a case in point: My endeavors here gave me the chance to beautify a truly splendid 1905 private home in southern Wisconsin and complement its amazing Palladian/Greek Revival-style bone structure with a contemporary composition in rock, plant material and water. The owner, who has a passion for architecture and historic preservation, had already completed a total restoration of the buildings. The grounds, however, still left much to be desired. The property manager had worked with me on a previous project, and he suggested that I should be brought in to revitalize the space – the centerpiece of which would turn out to be

Illuminating Outdoor Rooms

For more than 10 years now, outdoor rooms have been growing steadily in both popularity and complexity. That’s great, because it enables designers – architects, landscape architects, landscape designers and pool builders alike – to bring interiors outside and provide living spaces where activities previously associated strictly with indoor spaces can move comfortably into the great outdoors. It’s a fantastic way to expand living areas and create useful spaces while also adding entirely new types of experiences to the lives of homeowners. Among this trend’s many implications is that it has challenged landscape lighting designers to think in all-new ways about how we light exterior spaces. For starters, we need to be aware that most homeowners will enjoy these spaces exclusively after dark – and also be conscious of the fact that these environments require much more complicated lighting schemes than classic suburban patios ever did. The differences are so profound that I believe lighting designers need to talk to clients in new ways that

Medical Arts

Not long ago, I did a pair of columns on healing gardens and their benefits. If you’ll recall, I preached the importance of persuading hospitals in particular to include these spaces in their overall site plans as a means of providing garden environments for patients, patients’ families and hospital staff: These spaces reduce stress, help patients heal more quickly and give everyone who visits them a soothing sense of tranquility. I’ve attempted to the greatest extent possible to practice what I preached, and through the years I’ve installed numerous health-specific gardens at local assisted-living centers, Alzheimer’s care facilities and even at a center for emotionally-challenged children. But truth be told, I haven’t met with much success with our local hospitals, despite the fact that healing gardens have caught on with countless such facilities coast to coast. I don’t know quite why this is, but we

Pools of Light

If there’s ever been such a thing as a match made in heaven, swimming pools and landscape lighting lay a strong claim to that perfection. Separately, they take little-used spaces and transform them to all-day hubs of activity and sources of constant beauty. Together, however, the magic starts, with pools and landscape lighting systems accentuating each other’s virtues in ways that are tough to quantify or adequately describe. To landscape lighting designers and installers, pools offer a

Digging for Insight

For the best part of 20 years now, trend watchers have tracked Baby Boomers and have kept telling us that, as we aged, we’d definitely become homebodies – so much so that the words “nesting,” “cocooning” and “staycation” have all taken significant places in our social vocabulary. It’s a concept I’ve touched upon in these pages – numerous times, in fact – while observing that watershapes and other aquatic amenities go hand in glove with

Pursuit of Perfection

Through the years – but particularly within the past two or three – one of the comments I’ve heard with the greatest frequency is that WaterShapes is improving dramatically with respect to the content it presents. I’m always happy to hear any kind of positive feedback, but I’m always curious to know what about our coverage seems to be improving the most and always ask those who are making these comments to be as specific as they can. “Frankly,” I tell them, “I’m so close to what we print in the magazine that I

A Place to Begin

It’s a bit hard for me to believe it, but it’s now been fully 11 years since I attended my first Genesis 3 design school. One of the events I remember most clearly from that first session was (among many others) David Tisherman laying out a bunch of books and recommending that we should immediately obtain and read all of them. Always looking for a firm foothold, I asked him which one I should read first, and, without hesitation, he pointed to Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. I didn’t act on his advice right away, but I eventually acquired a copy and started reading – and it took me nearly

Civic Celebrations

For years, Montréal’s arts district has been the venue for music and theater performances, art exhibitions, festivals and all manner of cultural events. As part of a revitalization process in the area, notes David L’Heureux, the city recently unveiled the Place des Festivals and a spectacular watershape he and a distinguished design team built at its heart as a gathering place for residents and visitors of all ages and a civic focus for fun, relaxation and visual joy. Throughout North America in recent years, cities have turned to a variety of watershapes to enliven and, occasionally, revitalize their public spaces. These watershapes are more than the wonderful fountains long found in public parks and plazas. Indeed, the recent success of projects including Chicago’s Millennium Park and its ambitious combination of significant waterfeatures with gardens, architecture and art has demonstrated the tremendous potential that lies in crafting interesting, multi-functional places for people to gather. Canada offers a spectacular recent example of this trend in the form of

Wiring Simplified

Although the details of a well-organized equipment pad are seldom the object of as much appreciation as are the purely aesthetic touches on a project, they are no less important to its success, says Paolo Benedetti. Here, in the latest installment of his series on design and engineering solutions to common construction challenges, he offers advice on a key part of pad organization – that is, the management of its wiring connections. With today’s watershape circulation and support equipment becoming ever more complicated, there’s an increasing need to make equipment pads as uncluttered as possible. With that in mind, I’ve developed a few simple wiring strategies that let me keep things neat, organized and serviceable. It requires some improvisation, unfortunately, because for all the efforts manufacturers have undertaken to improve product performance, in many cases they have failed to make the wiring task as easy as it should be. A classic example is found in