ARTICLES Archives - Page 201 of 315

Getting Better

If you’ve ever spent time in the hospital, you’re probably like me in having done your best to forget the experience. Not only were you recovering from some sort of serious injury or illness (or visiting a loved one who was), but you also had to endure the process in an environment that wasn’t quite hospitable. Most likely the room you or your loved one occupied was filled by an adjustable bed surrounded by beeping instruments. The walls were putty-white and scuffed, a couple of cellblock-like doors led to the bathroom and hallway – and a worn-out television hung questionably above the bed, threatening to

Moving in Miniature

One of the clearest trends I’ve seen in watershaping through the past few years involves the use of water in the front spaces of properties, usually along a driveway or close to the main entrance. It’s something I’ve noticed on both the residential and commercial sides of the business, and these projects really do seem to be gaining traction as more time passes. In some cases, they might be the only watershape you’ll find on site. In others, they introduce a presence of water to be echoed

Direct Access

More than ever, the Internet is shaping the way we communicate and run our businesses. As I’ve mentioned previously, this why we’ve been working for a year now to enhance watershapes.com, backing the magazine up with resources and features designed to give you

Among all of David Tisherman’s many projects, this one carried him about as far as it could beyond his usual role as a watershaper: Not only did he design and install an impressive pool, but he also partnered in building the house that went along with it. Working in a rich color palette and soaring, eclectic architecture, he crafted a masterpiece of form and reflection and made the house seem to float on the watershape that embraces it.

House Work

There’s no substitute for working closely with clients. I typically spend many hours conversing with them, discussing everything from their travels and artistic interests to the specifics of the project at hand. It’s the only way I know of to ensure that I’m following the best path in developing a design to meet their needs. That approach was taken to something of an extreme in the project pictured here: Not only did I devise the outdoor spaces, including a large swimming pool and a host of other exterior features, but I also was extensively involved in building the house itself. It was an exciting process for me, one that yielded positive outcomes and that, to this day, is still one of my favorites. Interestingly, however, my association with these wonderful clients actually began a couple years before this project commenced – an encounter that resulted in no work for me at all and also

Level Fun

Oregon watershaper Giorgos Eptaimeros has developed a reputation for providing his clients with the full range of exciting aquatic experiences. Always on the lookout for new options to offer and, more specifically, for ways to bring popular commercial- and waterpark-type features to his residential projects, he recently turned to a leaping-jet/splash-pad kit to bring a dynamic backyard play feature to a distinctly mid-range project. When I emigrated from Greece to the United States nearly 20 years ago, I already had more than a decade of commercial project management experience under my belt. As is the case with

The Science of Selection

The availability of new and different materials has been a driving force behind the design revolution that has defined the watershaping industry for the past ten years. One key to that development, observes Kirk Butler of Cactus Stone & Tile, has been the willingness of suppliers to step into more progressive roles as purveyors of unique products that have blown the creative process wide open for watershape designers and builders – and their clients. In our business as a stone and tile supplier, we’ve often heard in the past 35 years that designers and contractors get tired of repetition: They come to us, they say, hoping to find things that inspire them to create projects that are new, unique and exciting. Frankly, we on the supply side are subject to the same sentiment: While we may be intimately familiar with materials our designers and builders have used over and over again and have no objection to working with the tried and true, we’re restless, too, and are always trying to find something new to bring to the table. Whether we’re working with a pool designer, a landscape architect, an interior designer, a home builder or even a homeowner, we believe everyone benefits from access to a wide array of quality products and materials. In our case at Cactus Stone & Tile (Phoenix, Ariz.), this means we literally travel the world to find and procure the widest possible range of hard-surface products, be it stone or tile. We beat the bushes across Europe and Asia and visit the far reaches of South America, dropping in on trade shows and fairs, introducing ourselves at quarries and processing facilities and doing whatever it takes to

Sailing Grace

Challenged to develop a sculpture that would make a strong statement about the commissioning company’s expertise in engineering and motion-control technology, Michael Batchelor and Andrey Bererzowsky of Montreal’s SWON Design delivered a work of subtle beauty to an otherwise stark architectural context. Here’s a close look at the resulting medley of textured glass, sheeting water, gleaming steel and arcing jets, all set within curving ponds. With residential projects, the importance of understanding the character and focus of the client is widely recognized and appreciated. Although the scales are different and the “clients” may be committees, we’ve discovered that the same is basically true with commercial projects as well. A case in point is this project, which we completed for Parker Hannifin, the Mayfield, Ohio-based manufacturer of engineering components and a multi-billion-dollar company whose products are found on everything from Space Shuttles to precision industrial machinery. Appropriately, the sculpture we were asked to design was to reflect a highly refined, disciplined sense of beauty. We at SWON Design were first contacted by an independent marketing consultant, Karen Skunta, who was participating in the company’s effort to re-brand itself – a program that, in part, included

20 Years After

To celebrate the 20th annual convention of the National Plasterers Council, Bruce Hughes – the organization’s founding chairman and former president of one of the industry’s largest plastering firms – looks back on NPC’s first years and the difficult process by which a feuding group of strong-willed contractors came together to form an association that has become a force for research, standards and industry progress. I remember it well: The National Plasterers Council’s first conference was a compact, one-day event in Los Angeles staged by an association that had only been around for about two years and had to that point been

Designing in Style

There was a time not long ago when most of my clients wanted swimming pool environments that were designed to suit a design theme of some sort that was separate and distinct from the house. It wasn’t unusual, for example, for clients here in Texas to ask for outdoor areas that replicated Rocky Mountain settings or tropical lagoons. Those projects still come along from time to time, but in the past few years, increasing numbers of my clients want exterior designs that clearly relate to the architecture of their homes. In part, this has to do with the trend toward

Containing Glare

In the landscape lighting business, we often hear complaints about glare and get lots of questions about how to bring it under control. In some cases, it’s a minor annoyance, but in others, some clients are so sensitive to the discomfort it can produce that it ruins entire lighting designs for them. So what exactly is “glare”? I define it as light transmitted directly from a source into an onlooker’s eyes (either directly or indirectly) in such a way that it’s a nuisance. Beyond the squinting