ARTICLES Archives - Page 245 of 312

By Contrast

Practice makes perfect when it comes to developing the observational skills you need to support your design acumen. As I discussed last month, honing these abilities enables a designer to see individual and collective shapes within a garden setting in ways that can enhance the overall appearance of plant/hardscape combinations and turn them into cohesive and more compelling visual compositions. Among all of those artistic abilities is one specific skill that has served me best and will be my subject in this column: That is, the ability to determine the level of contrast my clients want to see in their garden spaces. As an artist, I've always been inspired by the areas in paintings that display the

The Perfect Client

Despite the axiom that "every client is a good client," we all know that some of them are wonderful to work with - and that dealing with others is a form of slow torture. I've always loved hearing the horror stories about bad customers that float around the watershaping trades: The telling and retelling of these nightmares (often with exaggerations as the stories travel from ear to ear) is often a treat, and I know I've had my share of therapeutic fun at the expense of a knucklehead or two. We don't generally hear quite so much about the good ones, but it's fair to say that most of us have lists of satisfied clients and that our experiences with them give us much of the motivation we have to stay in the business. What it boils down to is this: Each and every client is

Breaking Ground

Welcome to the premiere edition of LandShapes, a magazine for professionals who design and install exterior environments. With this first issue, we begin a journey that will take us deep inside the landscaping professions to meet the needs of landscape contractors, designers and architects as well as excavators, soil-retention specialists, hardscape installers, lighting designers, arborists - just about

Brave New Worlds

If you're like me, news stories in magazines and on television that cover innovations in science and technology are far more interesting than about 95 percent of the stuff featured in the mainstream media these days. To me, few things are more intriguing than peeking in on the

Reopened in January 2006 after a nine-year renovation project, the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., has now resumed its role as host to what may be the world’s greatest private collection of Greco-Roman antiquities. With its classic architecture, subtle gardens and elegant watershapes – not to mention great views of the Pacific Ocean – the facility is both a state-of-the-art museum and a designed space that links the distant past to the present day.

A Villa for the Ages

For the typical visitor, the newly-reopened Getty Villa is perhaps the most exquisite of all possible venues for viewing ancient works of art and craft - reason enough to plan a visit. For students of architecture and design, however, there's much more, particularly the opportunity to immerse yourself in the living, breathing environment of a classic Roman villa and its abundant amenities. The Getty Villa site encompasses 64 acres of a rugged canyon rising above the Pacific Ocean in Malibu, Calif., and was once home to oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. A fanatical collector of Greco-Roman antiquities, he dedicated part of his original ranch-style home as a public museum in 1954. By 1974, less than a year before his death, he had completed and opened the original Villa on another part of the estate, realizing his ambition of creating a public monument dedicated to the arts. The Villa's layout was inspired by the Villa dei Papiri, a first-century country house in Pompeii buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. It was Getty's vision to display his collection in a setting evocative of its contents' historic origins and he realized it, but there were compromises: The spaces were crowded, and the works on display also included samples of paintings and craftworks of much more recent vintage - Renaissance masters, baroque furnishings and other distinctly non-classical artworks. The Villa closed in 1997 at about the same time the

Teamwork is about different things on different projects, say Martha and Randy Beard. As contractors specializing in the construction of watershapes conceived by top-flight architects, landscape architects and designers, they sometimes simply follow a plan. In the project covered here, however, their involvement was much broader – and reflects their increasing ability to step up and participate as valued members of the design team.

Continental Class

When we first began collaborating on projects with top-flight architects, landscape architects and landscape designers several years ago, for the most part our role in terms of design was fairly limited: We'd receive requests for bids and proposals based on plans of varying detail, and our role was that of faithful installers of the design. On occasions, of course, we'd also refer our own prospective clients to those same designers, who would generate plans that we would in turn estimate and very often install. We still work that way, but as we've built our ties to these accomplished artists, we've become aware that our role in their projects has been growing, even to the point where we are now being asked in many situations to offer our own design ideas. We're also seeing that, when on-site decisions must be made, these designers are

Essential Analysis

If you've yet to read any of the works of business guru Tom Peters, you're in for a real treat. A few years ago Peters wrote Re-Imagine, a book that established his reputation as a leader in the field of business philosophy and education. Last year, he released a trilogy of new books that expand on the themes and discussions that have made him both well known and hugely respected. Although published in three separate volumes, this series - Tom Peters Essentials: Leadership, Tom Peters Essentials: Talent and Tom Peters Essentials: Trends (all from DK Publishing, 2005) - is basically a single, remarkably well-written treatise loaded with

Crime at the Gate

Plagiarism. Copyright infringement. Theft of intellectual property. We hear and read about these crimes in the media all the time and don't think they'll ever affect us. But I can bear witness to the fact that we have people in our midst who seem to think that committing these crimes is no big deal. Setting aside any other criticism I've ever lain at the feet of the watershaping trades, if there's one intolerable problem the industry has, it's that there are people within it who are apparently willing to steal to get ahead. I'm not talking about job-site incidents where materials or tools mysteriously vanish. That's a real problem, but even more damaging in my eyes is the surprisingly common practice that some people have of representing the efforts of others as their own. In a phrase, I'm talking about

Powers of Observation

Most people move easily through the world, enjoying the scenery without really thinking about what makes those surroundings visually appealing (or not). Science tells us that the human eye can see about seven million colors and that our minds instinctively perceive depth and dimension. This visual capacity enables most of us to move around without bumping into things, some of us to swing at and somehow hit a golf ball and, in the case of a beautiful garden (we can hope), all of us sense pleasure and maybe a bit of

First Do No Harm

Elevating the way we do things in this industry means addressing our gaps in knowledge on several levels. First, excellence means understanding the aesthetic side of watershaping - design traditions, art history and the nature of visual appeal. Second (and right in step) is the need to know how to build various types of systems properly. As an industry, in other words, we need to know how to avoid mistakes. In February, Genesis 3 staged a construction school in Orlando - and what follows isn't a commercial; rather it's a point of departure for a discussion long overdue in our industry. What struck me is that