ARTICLES Archives - Page 202 of 315

Planting Pains

Early in the history of garden design – dating back to the earliest days of civilization in Sumeria, Egypt and China – plants took center stage in garden spaces. Terraces and hanging gardens were built not for their innate ornamental qualities, but rather to display the plants they contained. Always, the prized plant was more important than its container. This preeminence of plant displays has been the rule rather than the exception throughout history, even

The Light Ahead

Through the past several months, we’ve heard all sorts of voices discussing the current state of economic affairs – including mine in last month’s “Aqua Culture” column, but, more predominantly, those of representatives of the 24-hour-a-day news media. Anyone who isn’t living in a cave is by now aware that we’re caught up in an economic crisis of global proportions and that the consequences may be dire. We’ve heard that line so often and with such fervor, in fact, that it’s

Clear Choices

Among all of the many projects we’ve published in WaterShapes, a few have stood out as being extraordinary because of the artful ways they combine glass with water. In capable hands, the properties of solid and liquid combine to make statements about both materials that are constantly

For nearly six years, this was a project that occupied most of James Atlas’ working life, challenging him and the staff at Platinum Poolcare Aquatech with pursuing development of a watershape complex marked by great ambition, shifting needs and innumerable revisions. Now that his work is complete and the site is finally ready for its close-ups, Atlas guides us through a masterpiece he justly sees as his firm’s crowning achievement.

Opening a Shell

Most of the time, residential construction projects that stretch beyond a half-decade in the making involve significant delays or work stoppages. The project pictured here – known hereabouts as “The Shell Pool” – took nearly six years to complete, and what’s unusual about it is that it was basically a continuous effort. Even when we weren’t on site, seldom did a day go by when we weren’t involved on some level in design work, engineering and/or project planning. Now that it’s finished, I can say without hesitation that this was the most detailed, refined, all-consuming project we at Platinum Poolcare Aquatech of Wheeling, Ill., have ever tackled. I can’t begin to calculate the collective number of hours spent in client and staff meetings, phone conversations, skull sessions and design-revision meetings – and that doesn’t include time spent on site in bringing this amazing project to fruition. Even compared to the many intricate commercial projects we’ve worked on through the years, this one set a new standard in my experience with respect both to the spirit of innovation and the mountains of patience required to get the job done. Today, with all that effort behind us, it’s a rare pleasure to

Awakening a Dream

Certainly one of the world’s most unusual watershaping achievements, ‘Le Reve’ is a Las Vegas-style aquatic production that carries audiences into an amazing dream world of water, light, music and incredible acrobatic skill. To achieve the water effects, former Cirque du Soleil producer Franco Dragone turned to Aviram Müller and Canada’s Kaarajal Design Aquatique – and the result is a marriage of watershaping art and technology unlike any other. Franco Dragone’s design team first contacted me late in 2003. His company, which organizes groups of design firms to create some of the world’s most elaborate stage productions, was working on a new Las Vegas extravaganza for hotelier Steve Wynn. Wynn’s properties are famous for their water effects, including the wonderful fountains in front of Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip. I was told that his then-current project, the Wynn Resort, was to feature similarly spectacular water elements – one of which was to be

At a time when droughts seem to be aligning with increasing populations to ratchet up the pressure on our supplies of fresh water, the concept of using ponds and streams to capture and store rainwater is one whose time may well have come. Here, Aquascape’s Ed Beaulieu describes the installation of a prototype rainwater-harvesting system in a backyard in drought-plagued Georgia, where fresh water has recently become a precious commodity.

Harvesting Rain

Only three percent of the world’s water exists as fresh water – that is, water with low salinity and total dissolved solids of the sort found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, ponds, streams and aquifers. It is arguably our most precious resource because, quite simply, we can’t get along without it. As populations grow around the world, the amount of fresh water available for drinking, irrigation, bathing and sanitation annually decreases on a per capita basis. These fresh-water supplies are replenished only by precipitation, so when droughts disrupt historical weather patterns, there’s trouble ahead – especially if the shortages hit highly populated areas. Today, it is estimated that one in six people on our planet lacks access to an adequate water supply. While the vast majority of those who endure this disadvantage live in other parts of the world, we in the United States are becoming more and more subject to supply shortages when localized droughts occur. Recent conditions in the southeastern United States are a prime illustration of what this entails: In Georgia, for example, water supplies recently hit 50-year lows. These conditions resulted in the imposition of all sorts of restrictions on water use, in some areas leading to bans on the installation of new watershapes. At Aquascape (St. Charles, Ill.), we’ve long believed that it’s our responsibility as professional watershapers to act responsibly in such circumstances, meaning in our case that

The Home Front

When I was a landscape architecture student, my coursework on residential landscape design wasn’t much to speak of – just one project in a single course. In those days, in fact, expressing any interest in residential spaces made you something of an outcast who really should have been thinking of loftier pursuits in civic, public and commercial design. Happily, I’ve been hearing from some younger landscape architects that the situation is now different – but that there’s still no real focus on residential design and a tremendous void when it comes to

Safety First

Last October, I had the pleasure of attending the American Society of Landscape Architects’ convention in Philadelphia. While there, I spent much of my time sitting in the WaterShapes booth in the exhibit hall and found myself fielding a surprising number of questions from landscape architects about aquatic safety – and particularly on the new federal regulations and standards having to do with entrapment prevention. At first, I thought it was strange that this was such a hot topic among landscape architects, who, as a rule, haven’t been

In Service of Trees

I recently read a short article in a construction magazine in which the writer described a fairly convoluted process by which he had “protected” a tree on the site where he was working. Basically, what he did was wrap the trunk in two-by-four studs, securing them in place vertically with some loops of metal strapping. In his estimation, this was just what he needed to keep the tree from being damaged by accidental equipment bumps – the boards, in effect, would suffer and the tree

Fulfilling Prophesies

If you’re paying even the slightest bit of attention to the world at large, you’ve probably heard more than you ever wanted to know about current economic conditions. Indeed, everything that has happened in the past year or so with both our national and the global economy has made it hard for some people to think optimistically about the future. These are perilous times, as some say, and in one way or another, I know we’re all being affected by what’s going on. But that doesn’t seem to be the whole story. In fact,