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Creating watershapes and landscapes that are natural in appearance is always a challenge, says Ken Alperstein of Pinnacle Design, a firm that specializes in high-end projects related to top-flight golf courses. For this project in Shady Canyon, however, the ante was upped considerably by the site's location in an environmentally sensitive coastal canyon in southern California - a design challenge intensified by regulatory scrutiny every step of the way. It was a job that forced everyone involved to be on exactly the same page at all times. The landscapes and watershapes at the Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine, Calif., were developed by the Irvine Company as the heart of an upscale residential community. The wilderness area set aside for the course and its immediate surroundings had a subtle, bucolic charm all its own - a character the design team needed to
Many of the projects I tackle are largely about beauty and elegance and striking just the right balances between my watershaping and the setting, the architecture of the home and the character of my clients. In the case of the project depicted here, however, a couple of other considerations jumped into the mix - including impulses for fun and excitement as well as an overriding need to raise the visual energy level to align with the clients' personalities and a glorious setting. The result is an exquisitely adorned watershape that stands as one of the purest expressions of whimsy and unbridled joy I've ever produced. Truly, it all flowed from the clients and the setting. The clients are quite educated, well-traveled and sophisticated and had both the resources and the desire to do something special. Moreover, they're about as nice a couple as you could ever hope to meet and had refined tastes to match. As for the setting, we're talking beauty in the extreme: The home is a modern masterpiece perched atop a bluff in Malibu, Calif., with 180-degree ocean views and spectacular distant vistas. The only clinker on the property was the existing pool and the surrounding decks - an aggressively plain, kidney-shaped drag surrounded by equally boring decks. It was time for
With greater force than ever before, water conservation is back on the minds of governments, landscape professionals and property owners these days - and for good reason: The combination of growing demand and recurring periods of drought has sensitized people in many parts of the country to the fact that water isn't an infinite resource. Even this new magazine is part of the dialogue: In the September/October 2006 issue of LandShapes, James Minnich defined the need for landshapers to become more
There are some things that are better seen than described. In the case of pool and spa equipment, for example, there are situations in which manufacturer instructions or two-dimensional plan drawings simply do not give the installer all the information needed to get things right the first time. As a result - and as everyone who installs equipment sets knows - the plumbing and layout of the equipment usually requires some level of on-site improvisation. In our work of designing hydraulic systems for complex watershapes - everything from commercial pool facilities to interactive waterfeatures and fountains - we've seen the need to find a way to specify precisely how we want our equipment sets to be installed. No two-dimensional plumbing schematic or manufacturer-supplied manual does that part of the job. That is, they do not completely delineate the way
We live in a multi-dimensional world. Most people understand that space has three dimensions: height, width and depth. But relatively few people look at color in the same way - that is, as a three dimensional phenomenon. Understanding these three dimensions of color can become the key to unlocking your creativity as a designer. We began our study of color in LandShapes' May/June issue ("Designing in Color," click here), where we explored the scientific nature of color and its first dimension - hue, the name of a color (red, yellow, blue, orange, green or violet) - and learned that each hue has a temperature range (from warm to cool). We also learned that all six hues may be organized and better understood through the use of a helpful tool developed by color scientists called the color wheel. We will now continue our study of color by exploring the second and third dimensions of color and then by discussing contrast, analogous and complementary colors and color harmony. This will enable us to begin applying these fundamentals as landshapers and see in practical terms how understanding these fundamentals can help us become better
Whether we function as designers or builders or both, we watershapers tend to be flexible folk: We mold ourselves to projects and situations and tasks when we're called on to apply our skills and experience, and this often leads us to perform in unanticipated ways. This sort of adaptability is a way of life for most of us: It's a talent we use to produce success. But even the most adaptable practitioners of the watershaping arts will, every once in a while, encounter a project that shocks the system, alters all formulas and breaks down familiar parameters. In these rare cases, just surviving the process is an accomplishment that brings a sense of relief as well as a sense of amazement that both you and the project made it through to completion. I was recently fortunate enough to be part of just such a project - a fascinating set of challenges now known as the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. It's the last museum that will be
Integrated pest management - or IPM, as it has become widely known -- is a concept that emerged about 20 years ago when landscape professionals and others involved in the management of plants and the land began incorporating its techniques into their landscape installation and management projects. Unfortunately, however, the concept of pest management is all too often seen as the exclusive province of those engaged in landscape maintenance: As a rule, designers and design/build contractors rarely pay more than lip service to pests in general and give even less attention to considering them as part of an integrated approach. At the risk of being labeled a "tree hugger," I believe it's time for everyone involved in the various landscape professions to embrace IPM. The simple truth is that, as landshapers, we need to pick up on the lessons of our collective experience. As the saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it - as we have, over and
It's a plain fact: In many regions of the United States these days, the vast majority of construction laborers speak Spanish. That's a big deal because, as watershapers, it is our responsibility to convey the design mission for our projects as well as all-important client wishes to these talented craftspeople - not to mention the basic, general communications that come with managing the work of individuals and small groups of people. Where I work in Texas, this is the simple reality - and I know it's true as well in California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada and many other parts of the country. As a consequence, I think it makes sense for those responsible for guiding the overall efforts of these workers to be able to communicate with them in their own language. After all, these are the folks who are installing the details we've so carefully designed and engineered. For my part, I'm trying to elevate my communications skills by
With some details, seeing is believing. That's certainly the case with the one we'll consider in this column, where the images will do much of the work in defining a simple but elegant way of making a statement with any raised bond beam or wall. Yet again, it's testimonial to the good things that happen when watershapers know how to control materials and infuse their work with visual appeal. Most of the time when pool people build small or medium-size walls, they'll automatically be topped with some form of coping or capstone - anything from poured-in-place concrete or stone to brick or some pre-fabricated coping. Many of these walls are
It has always bothered me a bit that designers tend to restrict their thinking to just the physical area that fits the definition of their design specialty. Landscape designers stick to outdoor spaces and interior designers work on interior ones - and seldom the twain shall meet. To my way of thinking, that's shortsighted - which is just one of the reasons I'm both a landscape designer and an interior designer. I would argue that, when it is appropriate, professionals on both sides of the divide need to open their eyes and work with the visual flow through and between clients' interior and exterior spaces to achieve optimal design results. As landscape professionals, we already accept the importance of the "borrowed view," a wonderful term used to describe the deliberate capturing of other properties' assets by creating living or artificial frameworks that make them an artistic component of our clients' landscapes. If we are good at capturing neighboring views for our landscapes, I'd suggest it's a short step to make certain that we achieve the same sorts of wonderful views between the
