ARTICLES Archives - Page 266 of 325

Natural stone has been used in and around watershapes for uncounted generations, observes stone supplier and distributor Dennis Haase. In recent years, however, its use in these aquatic contexts has increased dramatically. That’s partly due to an expanding range of products, he says, but it’s also a result of modern quarrying and manufacturing technology that has made fine stone more accessible to increasing numbers of designers and builders.

Digging Quarries

Natural stone is certainly the most time-honored of all building materials. From the pyramids of Egypt to the temples and civic buildings of ancient Greece and Rome; from the palaces and villas of the Renaissance to the most contemporary structures of our modern era, we see a material forged within the earth for millions of years that has been painstakingly quarried and shaped into myriad forms both functional and decorative. Even with the advent of cementitious components and a range of other manufactured substitutes, stone remains the material of choice in a great many applications. In fact, the range of natural stone materials available to designers and builders expands almost daily in response to the specific demands of watershapers and other designers and contractors - and there's no end in sight. Our company, tr stone, is a U.S. distribution facility owned and operated by one of the world's largest stone producers, Tureks, based in Afyon, Turkey. The best thing about the marketplace from the perspective of designers and builders is that high-quality stone is now available from a wide range of domestic and foreign sources in a number of distinctive

Tucked into a canyon within easy walking distance of the Pacific Ocean, the the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles is an oasis of water, plants and spiritual imagery. At a time when exterior designers are often being asked to develop “tranquility gardens,” it’s a model space of beauty and serenity – and, for landscape designer Stephanie Rose, has become a place to fine tune her skills in plant selection and placement.

Sea of Tranquility

During a lifetime of driving up and down the part of Sunset Boulevard where it finally meets the Pacific Ocean, I'd often noticed the sign pointing to "Lake Shrine" but had never taken the time to stop and have a look. I suppose the "shrine" part of it made me think it was the exclusive preserve of adherents or members of the Self-Realization Fellowship - an organization I knew nothing about other than that their facility was in one of Los Angeles' most beautiful locations. I finally overcame my hesitation about visiting the Lake Shrine a couple years ago, when a friend told me it was a place where people of all faiths and religions were welcome to stroll, meditate and enjoy the tranquility of the setting. Curiosity overcame skepticism and I finally visited the place. What I found at the Lake Shrine was a serene, calm, meditative oasis of lush, beautiful gardens surrounding a lake. To this day many years later, the minute I drive through the entrance gate, I'm always swept up by sensations of serenity and peace - and have since

From Outer Space

If you're uncomfortable with ultra-adventurous design schemes, you can stop reading this review right now. If, however, you find inspiration in projects that are completely original, then Diarmuid Gavin's Outer Spaces is an amazing and rewarding book. The 256-page text (DK Publishing, 2003) covers 25 mind-blowing projects by this award-winning Irish landscape architect and host of his own PBS series, The Home Front. Gavin has become something of an international celebrity with a reputation for creating what might loosely be termed "contemporary spaces" that use materials, shapes, plant materials and water in extraordinary and surprising ways. In this book (one of several he's published), he starts by

Living in Color

Few things are as important to the aesthetic impression made by swimming pools, spas and other watershapes as the colors you select to use in it and around them. Take tile as an example. Whether it's just a waterline detail, a complete interior finish or some elaborate mosaic pattern, it serves to draw the eye into a design. If the color and material selections work, the scene can become extraordinarily elegant and beautiful. If they don't, you can have a major eyesore on your hands. The amazing thing to me is how few watershapers ever really consider the importance

Simple Green

It's that time of year when our thoughts begin turning to the beautiful colors of the fall - and the subsequent bareness of winter. Whether you're in the coldest northern reaches or enjoy the relative warmth of the Sunbelt, we all are aware that fall is a transition to a time when the annuals will fade once and for all and the deciduous plants will drop their leaves. But I propose that it doesn't have to be so - or at least that we can minimize the seasonal holes in our gardens through thoughtful use of evergreen trees and shrubs. These are the most abundant of all plant types, after all, and the bones of

The Mathway to Success

I've always been puzzled by people who look at money as a taboo topic. Within any form of business, of course, competitors are restricted by federal anti-trust laws from getting specific in discussions of pricing, overhead and profit margins. But it's always seemed to me that understanding those factors in broad, general terms (which are legally discussable, by the way) is at the core of the success of any business - especially in the world of contracting. The reason pricing, overhead and margins are so critical is that they reflect your core values and those of your company with respect to both money and overall business philosophy. It's my informed view that too many contractors severely

Seeing and Believing

One of the most interesting things about running WaterShapes has been the opportunities I've had to get out and see projects, both in process and finished. Through the years, I've been treated to

Inspired by the work of great architects, watershaper Paul Benedetti has created a masterpiece of his own in the form of a pool/spa composition that now graces a spectacular setting in Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Using multiple water levels, reflective surfaces and water-in-transit effects, the design delivers straight-ahead contemporary aesthetics while encompassing a sublimely complicated set of geometric and hydraulic relationships.

Transit Cubed

As watershapers, we occasionally are given the opportunity to interact with modern architecture in ways that enable us to generate genuine works of art. This trail linking some of today’s most expressive architecture to the reflective and auditory potential of water has been blazed by great designers including John Lautner, Ricardo Legorreta and Luis Barragan. They and their followers have thoroughly explored the geometries, materials and spatial relationships that make up the modern architectural dialogue between structures and water – and the results have often been breathtaking. Almost without exception, their success in these designs is a matter of context and the setting, and as one who has studied their projects for many years, I now have a clearer sense of the excitement they must have felt when things came together and everything about a project was just right. For the project pictured in these pages, a hilltop setting, the contemporary architecture of the home and willing clients set the stage for what is probably

Quality watershapes, says landscape architect, contractor and teacher Mark Holden, generally start with quality plans. That’s why he’s become such a strong advocate for increased detail and a more representative level of professionalism in the industry’s construction documents. As he explains here, there are some basic, common features that should be present in plans for watershapes of all descriptions, types, shapes and sizes.

Precision Planning

As the fields of landscape architecture and watershaping intermingle, the knowledge bases for each trade increasingly need to be shared across various design, engineering and construction disciplines. That sharing, unfortunately, has been relatively slow to develop, which means that, as a designer and builder and of custom high-end watershape and landscape projects, I am often frustrated by the lack of detail I find in plans and specifications generated on all levels of the trade. Although this deficiency flows freely from all sectors, the most frequent sources of inadequacy in watershape plans are landscape architects and designers, too many of whom offer information that is disturbingly vague and thoroughly lacking in detail. We've all seen the blue patch on the overhead plan view - a grossly inadequate delineation of a significant design component if ever there was one. Contractors presented with such documentation are left to define specific details themselves and essentially are asked to build some version of that blue patch as they

The art of crafting visually pleasing bodies of water is very much a matter of understanding and applying appropriate edge treatments, says master watergardener, author and teacher Anthony Archer-Wills. In the first of a sequence of articles on such topics, he shares the principles and techniques he uses to create watershapes that invite observers right to the water’s edge, where they are rewarded with dynamic and carefully balanced vistas.

Sculpting Edges

When we think about the challenge of literally "shaping" a body of water, we must start by thinking about edges. The edge is the pond's DNA or blueprint. It tells us almost everything about the pond. Without being able to observe the edge, you can't discern whether it's a formal pond, lake or a sewage-treatment facility. It might be a beautiful water feature or an eyesore. The edges form our reference in defining the whole setting and are consequently of the utmost importance. We find this defining-edge concept at work in nature's own beaches, riverbanks and lakeshores, and it is a one that extends right through the heart of watergardening and all types of watershaping, whether architectural or naturalistic (or, as I commonly classify them, formal or informal). No matter the focus or intent of our designs, we must always consider what will be happening at the water's edge. This is the part that demands the most thought, skill, care and expenditure. The subject of edges is so massive that it will be considered here and in articles to come. For purposes of this discussion, we'll limit our look to the use of edges in informal pond settings and situations in which we are attempting to create the impression that the body of water in question was originally