ARTICLES Archives - Page 204 of 316

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,

To Better Days!

I imagine that many of you said “good riddance” instead of “farewell” to 2008 – and that almost as many of you might want to skip right over the looming uncertainty of 2009 completely and head directly into 2010. Nobody can jump

Material Issues

At a meeting in Phoenix in August 2008, Kirk Butler of Cactus Stone & Tile described watershape designers and builders as practitioners of "the science of selection" when it comes to deciding which products and materials to use in their projects. His observation immediately rang bells for me: At that point late in the summer, we

Material Issues

At a meeting in Phoenix in August 2008, Kirk Butler of Cactus Stone & Tile described watershape designers and builders as practitioners of "the science of selection" when it comes to deciding which products and materials to use in their projects. His observation immediately rang bells for me: At that point late in the summer, we

From time to time, says David Tisherman, you run into a design in which ‘restraint’ is the watchword. That was certainly true in this project, where he found an elegant English manor home and has given it a pool that looks as though it’s been there for a hundred years. Far less restrained, however, is the structure that holds the watershape in place – and does so without applying any extra pressure to a huge retaining wall that stands just a few feet away.

Elegant Intentions

Sometimes, the main idea that will drive a design jumps to mind as soon as you see the site. That was the case with the project covered here: When I pulled up to the gate of the property - high in the affluent hills of Bel Air, Calif. - what I found wasn't a big, showy home of the sort that have increasingly come to characterize the neighborhood; instead, what I saw was a place defined by subtlety and elegance. It all started with the gate's beautiful brick pilaster, beyond which I could just glimpse a large, lovely home with the distinctive architecture of an English manor house. Even though I hadn't met the clients yet or seen the entire job site, I was already convinced that the project would be