ARTICLES Archives - Page 247 of 315

Integrated Style

As the first columnist among several who will be writing in this space, I've been elected to explain what this "Material World" thing is all about. I agree with the editors that it does require some explaining - but not much. The thought is that we in the landshaping business, designers and installer alike, seldom use a single material all on its own. Even a huge, monolithic concrete deck outside a grand office building will have ribbons of stone or brick to break up the monotony. The aim of this and subsequent articles - whoever writes them - is to discuss the process we go through in selecting plant and/or hardscape material combinations that ultimately work together to become beautiful and seemingly effortless explorations of style, texture and color. In other words, we'll be looking at projects for which all the

Pretty as a Picture

Swimming pools and other watershapes make great subjects for photographers, which makes it logical that every year or two I've be able to amass a new collection of these books to review. In general, publications such as these are all about pretty projects and are aimed mainly at consumers, but I've always found them useful as sources for design ideas and, in general, as a means of seeing what other people are doing. For the most part, however, these publications are not particularly "informative": Once you get past the pictures, there's really not much else there to build knowledge or advance the craft. Such is the case with all four of the publications I'll cover here in quick, round-up fashion. All are beautifully illustrated, and some display an interesting range when it comes to

The ‘Ahh’ Factor

"No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being." - Ansel Adams The man considered by many to be the father of American landscape architecture often referred to himself as a "garden maker," a self-description by Fletcher Steele that influenced me greatly when I first saw it in a book about him in 1990. When I think of the word "making" on its own, I see images of human hands crafting cherished artifacts or offerings, while the word "garden" conjures a host of images from Eden to Shangri-La. Taken together, however, the words evoke even more powerful images of the deliberate shaping of places of great beauty and serene repose - an apt definition for any landscape professional. When I borrowed those

An Elegant Inception

Beginning a project can be wonderfully exciting, especially when you're working in a beautiful place with a terrific client who wants something truly elegant and special. In fact, I can honestly say that there's nothing quite like the exhilaration of stepping into a new situation with great potential, defining those possibilities and watching a client's eyes light up with the fire of inspiration. Case in point: Not long ago, my partner Kevin Fleming and I were called out to a job site on Long Beach Island, N.J., by local landscaper Mark Reynolds, who'd heard of us and our reputation for using top-quality materials in top-flight designs. When we pulled up, the first thing I noticed was the

Searching for Inspiration

Santiago Calatrava. Mario Salvadori. James van Sweden. Piet Oudolf. Topher Delany. Frederick Law Olmsted. Frank Lloyd Wright. Andy Goldsworthy. If these names aren't familiar to you already, I'd suggest making an effort to find out who these people are and why I've listed them like this. Some are icons in the history of architecture and design, and certainly all of them have inspired many of us in the landscape trades to reach beyond our boundaries. Personally, these gifted artists have long served as primary sources of inspiration and have always fueled my creativity. Inspiration flows from many sources, of course - maybe from a project you've seen in print or a particularly

Cast acrylic and water are a great match, says Nate Reynolds of Reynolds Polymer Technology. Indeed, since the company started in the 1970s, most of its projects have been about containing large amounts of water while providing clear viewing for high-volume aquariums, display pools and other watershapes. Here, Reynolds guides us through some of the firm’s most ambitious installations while discussing what it takes to design with acrylic.

Shining Through

When you ask people about transparent building materials, most people immediately think of glass. Glass is certainly stronger than most people realize, but it has never been an ideal structural material because of its weight, brittleness and structural limitations. With our acrylic products, by contrast, architects and other designers have found a material with which they can create substantial transparent structures that are much lighter and more versatile than those made with glass – and with a structural strength more than double that of concrete. R-Cast acrylic (as we call it) is indeed an amazing material: Its uses span from the obvious pools, fountains or aquariums to awesome signage and seemingly impossible structures and lighting (to mention a few possibilities). Its combination of optical clarity with safety, strength, flexibility and UV resistance has allowed an increasing numbers of designers across a range of disciplines to embrace the material as never before. There are several firms that provide acrylic materials to the construction marketplace, with

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