ARTICLES Archives - Page 195 of 315

Behind True Green

I wasn’t surprised when Jim McCloskey suggested that it was high time for us to produce a Green Issue of WaterShapes: I’ve known him for more than 20 years and have long admired his dedication to environmentalism, recycling and keeping the planet healthy for his children and everyone else’s children as well – beliefs I wholeheartedly share. I was, however, caught a bit off guard by

As is true of many of his fellow watershape and landscape artists, Rick Driemeyer is also an avid explorer of nature. For years, in fact, he’s made a practice of regularly visiting wilderness areas for both professional inspiration as well as pure enjoyment – a perfect pairing, as he sees it. To press that point here in a big way, he shares what he’s encountered in hiking through four of the most spectacular national parks in the western United States.

National Wonders

By now, the thought that watershape and landscape designers need to study nature if they want to replicate it in their projects is basically a cliché. Truly, if you want to mimic nature successfully, you must first know it intimately. What many miss in all this, I believe, is a deeper level of “knowing” that goes well beyond simply observing nature as a source of techniques and ideas. Frankly, I think that as designers and as human beings, we are much better off when we also learn how to become nature – by which I mean letting the sights, sounds and smells draw us physically into the place. In doing so, we engage in experiences so profound that the mere mentioning of that place will set us off with memories we will share enthusiastically – or can use as parts of our latest projects. No matter how often I visit natural places, I’m always amazed at the

It’s not his daily practice to install watershapes in conjunction with computer-controlled telescopes, but that’s just what Jim Wilder had to do in creating a reflecting pool to surround a towering pyramid atop which an observatory now sits. Through close collaboration with what can best be described as a ‘stellar’ project team, he and his colleagues developed a design solution that stands among the most unusual Wilder has ever seen for a residential project.

Eyes on the Skies

Among the wonderful benefits of working in the custom watershaping business is that you never really know what sort of projects will wander into view. Through the years, we at Live Water Creations of Santa Rosa, Calif., have certainly participated in developing and executing some unusual designs, but I can honestly say that working on one that included a huge, beautiful steel pyramid topped by a deep-space telescope was something that had yet to come our way. And it would have stayed that way had I not received a call from John Anderson of Pools by Rapp, another firm here in Santa Rosa. We’ve collaborated on other projects in which our firm has built ponds or fountains to go along with pools and spas he’s done. In this case, he was installing a lap pool and wanted our help in what he could only describe as an extremely unusual watershape. The client said he had just built a beautiful contemporary home and, as an astronomy buff, wanted to complete the package with

Materials scientist and concrete expert George Yoggy has studied the shotcrete and gunite processes for more than 50 years, focusing not only on tunnel and mine construction but also turning his eye toward watershapes. Here, he reviews industry standards for the density, strength and permeability of pneumatically placed concrete shells and urges watershapers to step up and adopt standards and practices followed by others in the concrete industry.

The Elevated Game

In the world of concrete science and application, innumerable variables have an influence on whether a concrete installation is successful or not. These include but are not limited to the skill of the applicator, the suitability of the mix design, the temperature at the time of application, the equipment used, the water-to-cement ratio and the size of the aggregate. For all the seeming complexity, however, the nature of the material itself invests the process with a few immovable facts. One of these directly undermines the swimming pool industry’s “standard” that calls for a compression strength of 2,500 pounds per square inch for pneumatically placed concrete (that is, gunite or shotcrete). It’s not because the standard is inadequate per se; rather, it’s because

Luxury with a Twist

Root Design has always focused on developing environments that delight, inspire and occasionally surprise clients, but the project seen in this, the first of two articles, may well be the company’s most elaborate to date. Here, Ben Dozier and Michael Percy describe what went into designing and building across the entire site, including the multiple watershapes that helped transform this estate into an oasis filled with plants, light, sounds and water. Although it doesn’t always work out this way, the best-case scenario for us at Root Design (Austin, Texas) is to accept full responsibility for all exterior spaces of a given property, from the footprint of the house out to the property lines. In these situations, our team is able to establish designs with wall-to-wall continuity in response to the environment, the architecture and our client’s wishes. We commit ourselves in these circumstances to taking homeowners and their guests on a journey, starting the moment they enter the property and moving all the way through to the yard’s farthest reaches and all the spaces in between. Along the way, they’ll enter a variety of small or large vignettes, conceal-and-reveal discoveries, dramatic focal points and multiple rewarding destinations – each conceptually linked as a coherent “whole.” In this case, we were called upon to

Seeking Inspiration

In looking back on my career, I see that the past 20 years have been marked by a number of points at which I altered what I was doing. Sometimes I changed companies; other times I found a way of shifting my approach to my work or how I conducted my life. In looking back, I’m proud of the fact that every time I chose to go in a new direction, the changes I made resulted in dramatic improvements in my career and in my enjoyment of my work and, indeed, of my life in general. In other words, I’ve learned that, when approached the right way, change offers us an opportunity to advance our own causes in business and in life. Yes, it can be scary in that it typically involves

Section Dissection

In my last “Currents” column (June 2009), I began a discussion of Project Manuals with an overview of these written specifications and other construction documents and how they are formally bound and made part of a project’s contract documents. This time, we’ll dig inside the manuals and take a closer look at what they contain. Let me start with a simple recommendation: If you don’t already work with Project Manuals in some form, now is probably a good time to get started – especially if you’re a watershaper who prepares designs to be

Learning by Doing

In my capacity as landscape consultant to a town near where I live, I was approached recently by a landscape architect who was just starting her career after graduating from a prestigious, five-year landscape architecture program in my home state of New York. She was designing a butterfly garden, she said, and wanted to know what plants to use. As I ran down the list, she asked me to stop at one name in particular and spell it. The plant in question was

Setting Egos Aside

One of the themes I’ve covered repeatedly through the years has had to do with the need for all of us to become effective team players. True, there have been times when egos have gotten in the way and I’ve found myself in fairly dysfunctional groups, but for all that, I have to say that collaboration very often yields great results. In fact, the vast majority of team projects in which I get involved these days are wonderful collaborations among clients, architects and general contractors as well as (depending on the project) interior designers, landscape architects, lighting designers and more. Of all those practitioners,

Extreme Treasures

Through the years, WaterShapes has published numerous columns and articles that speak to the value of studying and appreciating nature. Time and again, for example, contributors ranging from Brian Van Bower to Anthony Archer Wills (along with others too numerous to list) have waxed eloquent about the importance of getting out and taking good, long looks at the way things get done in the natural world. Those of you who have not been inclined to take that message seriously will get quite a break on September 27, when the Public Broadcasting System will begin