ARTICLES Archives - Page 213 of 315

The Light of the Long View

I’ve always believed that pessimism is useless. At times, I think it can even be destructive, which is why I personally beat the drum for positive thinking every chance I get. Sure, there are always going to be those who accuse optimists like me of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, but I counter that by saying that I also believe that optimism is worthless if positive thoughts aren’t backed up by equally positive actions. That this is the foundation of my philosophy should be obvious to

Healthy Trails

It’s great when people start talking about important issues – and satisfying to have a hand in provoking those discussions. In the past 18 months or so, you may have noticed that we at WaterShapes have published occasional articles about swimming, aquatic activity and hydrotherapy as they relate to

Specialists in land planning for large-scale developments, the Hilton Head Island, S.C.-based landscape architecture firm of Wood+Partners, Inc., believes in building communities that harmonize with nature. In late 2003, say the authors, the company was asked to generate a master plan for Hampton Lake, a planned community that follows the company philosophy to the letter, linking luxury living to responsible environmental stewardship.

All About the Water

People who live in and around Hilton Head Island, S.C., cherish the memory of Charles Fraser, the visionary developer who set the standard for the way communities look along vast stretches of the Carolina coast. Most prominently, he pioneered progressive land-planning standards 50 years ago in developing Sea Pines, one of the first communities to incorporate environmental preservation as part of the development, take its design cues from nature and support the concept with land covenants and restrictions. Fraser’s vision for Sea Pines has since become the foundation for many planned communities worldwide and embodies a philosophy that has, in the intervening years, spread throughout the country. Indeed, our firm – Wood+Partners of Hilton Head – has always endeavored to adhere to this approach in planning communities that are situated in and around natural environments. Most of the time, that means we work (as Fraser did) with water as a central amenity, whether the setting borders a lake, the ocean, a river or a natural wetland area. As we see it, our mission is to preserve and, where we can, even

The project depicted here has been the professional challenge of a lifetime, says watershaper and landscape architect Kathy Marosz. It all started two years ago, when she began working with a highly imaginative client who refused to put any limits on what might be done. Subsequently, as she reports in the first of three articles on the results, her involvement grew from execution of a plan into a near-boundless exercise in creative collaboration.

When Dreams Grow

Some clients don’t know any limits when it comes to their ambitions – and that’s certainly been true in this case. His mountain-sized home is set on a relatively flat four-acre parcel in otherwise hilly Ramona, Calif. The client himself describes the building as looking like a casino, and indeed it does have a decidedly “eclectic” architectural look. What he wanted was a backyard to match – a free-wheeling composition that might best be described as a Tommy Bahama-inspired tropical resort. He let me know that the family

In his work as a landscape artist and custom watershaper, Robert Nonemaker often uses rills – small channels that simply and gracefully move water from one place to another – to bring interesting rhythms and harmonies to his garden spaces. Although these features tend to be less than assertive, he notes, the way water moves through their narrow slots can do wonders when it comes to adding depth and detail to watershape designs.

The Subtlest Flows

My dictionary defines a rill as a small stream cut by erosion. In the practice of watershaping, however, that colorful little word has been stretched to cover manufactured channels in which we artfully move water from one place to another. These often-subtle effects have a history dating at least to the 5th Century BC, when Persian kings demonstrated their power over nature by using rills to bring water – a symbol of fertility as well as a practical means of cooling architectural spaces – from rivers and aqueducts to their palaces. These early rills were observed and adopted by Muslim designers and engineers who rose to eminence in the Middle East more than a millennium later and were carried along as Islamic influence spread through India, North Africa and, eventually, Spain, where signature elements of Moorish architecture are still seen today in the famous

Seeking Wellness

You don’t have to be a physician to know that watershapes offer profound benefits when it comes to health, fitness and wellness. Indeed, most people know that swimming and other forms of activity in water are, along with hydrotherapy, among the healthiest of all activities known to us mere mortals. Unfortunately, and for reasons that escape me, promoting the value of that connection has never spent much time on our industry’s front burner. My own curiosity about the topic recently led me to seek published resources, and I’m sad to say that my search hasn’t yielded much. It reminds me of my early days in this industry and a time long ago when I craved books that would inspire my design work: For a long time, there wasn’t much to find – but that’s all changed now. My hope is that the case with water-related health and wellness is the same and that it will soon become a

Identifying the Issue

It’s an unfortunate fact that landscape architects receive little or no formal education in watershaping while they’re in school. As a result, where the typical landscape architect’s irrigation plan will show every pipe, fitting, wire and component for a given project, that same project’s pool plan will carry almost no detail at all. This phenomenon begs the question: Why don’t our colleges and universities do more to educate landscape architects about watershaping? The answer to this question causes me double pain, because I know full well that

On Decks

I’m sort of a curmudgeon when it comes to wood decks. They’ve been on the scene for a good 50 years now, and many of them are just fine – but I’ve spent an awful lot of time in my career loathing what I see and helping my clients remedy the short-sightedness of those who set them up in the first place. At times, I just wish everyone had stuck to stone. What really gets my goat are the uninspired linear expanses that poke aimlessly off the backs of houses. Residential developers often resort to

Moving Over the Edge

As we discussed last month, perimeter-overflow details are among the most distinctive and challenging of all features in today’s custom pool market. In March’s column, we defined the different types of these edge designs, then described the complex, exacting process of building a knife-edge overflow system. This time, we’ll get into the hydraulic finesse needed to make these systems work. This includes everything from calculating bather surges to sizing the plumbing and surge tanks needed to make these effects function

Ends and Beginnings

If you’ll recall, I used this space last month to say farewell to David Tisherman’s “Details” column. His departure left us with a significant role to fill – especially given how provocative his column had been through the years. As often happens when a key person departs an organization, we weighed the available options and, not to flatter David overmuch, decided that replacing a voice so singular would best be accomplished by