ARTICLES
Advance Search
Aquatic Health
Aquatic Health, Fitness & Safety
Around the Internet
Aquatic Culture
Aquatic Technology
Artful Endeavors
Celebrity Corner
Life Aquatic
Must-See Watershapes
People with Cameras
Watershapes in the Headlines
Book & Media Reviews
Commentaries, Interviews & Profiles
Fountains
Join the Dialogue
Landscape, Plants, Hardscape & Decks
Lighter Side
Ripples
Test Your Knowledge
The Aquatic Quiz
Other Waterfeatures (from birdbaths to lakes)
Outdoor Living, Fire Features, Amenities & Lighting
Ponds, Streams & Waterfalls
Pools & Spas
Professional Watershaping
Structures (Editor's Notes)
Travelogues & History
WaterShapes TV
WaterShapes World Blog
Web Links
Around the Internet
Aquatic Culture
Aquatic Technology
Artful Endeavors
Celebrity Corner
Life Aquatic
Must-See Watershapes
People with Cameras
Watershapes in the Headlines
One of the characteristics I've noticed among watershape designers is a tendency to stick with what works. Nowhere is this more pronounced than with the often-tricky issue of working with color: It's almost as if there's an unwritten rule that a very small palette of very familiar colors are all that is appropriate - especially for pools and spas! I believe that this lack of color creativity extends to some degree from familiarity with certain key products and their standard colors, be they tile, plaster or exposed-aggregate materials. To a much greater extent, however, I think the cause is a lack of basic education in color theory. I speak from experience on this subject, because for all of my
I recently received a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter who was doing a feature on preparing a home for sale. She told me she wanted a landscape designer's perspective on how homeowners should spend their money to get the most bang for the buck and really put me on the spot in the process: Her deadline was the following morning, and I had to do some fast thinking when her call came in at 8 pm. It immediately occurred to me that I always ask homeowners whether they are landscaping for
To my way of thinking, professional design work requires a professional workspace in which all of the necessary professional tools are available. In fact, for the designer creating custom watershapes, I see the space in which the work actually unfolds as being critical and cutting to the very heart of what it really means to be a "designer." I know that term is a loaded one, which is why I put it in quotation marks. After all, anyone can say that he or she is a designer, even if all they do is sit at a coffee table
It's amazing how many people I meet in the course of my day-to-day life who do not embrace the basic idea that the single most important part of doing business is how they interact with current and prospective clients. Way too often, I'll run into someone - usually an employee, but sometimes (and shockingly) a manager or owner - who just doesn't have a clue or really doesn't seem to care. This happens so often, in fact, that I find my patience growing shorter with the laziness, incompetence or downright rudeness I encounter. It's gotten to the point where I'm
When pursued as it should be, watershaping is all about creating a sensory experience. In fact, you could make the argument that watershapes appeal to
Next to the water itself, concrete is the most important and widespread of materials used in watershaping. Not only is it instrumental in creating the structures that contain water as well as the substructures that support them, concrete is also the stuff of which faux-rock panels, pre-cast or poured-in-place coping, pavers, all manner of stamped or textured decks and poured-in-place or block walls are made. Despite its omnipresence, however, concrete remains one of the most misunderstood of all watershaping materials in this sense: Because it is so durable in basic structural applications, there's a tendency to
Composition of this article began with an e-mail I received a while ago from a colleague working in Australia. "What," he asked, "is the maximum allowable depth for a fountain in the United States?" As simple as it sounded, when I took the time to research the issue I found that there was a noticeable lack of definition. I took the next logical step and called various people I know in the watershaping industry and asked them the same question. Surprisingly enough, nobody could point me to any code, regulation or standard that defined what depth a waterfeature's pool could
A tremendous amount of synergy and teamwork went into the making of "The Ultimate Family Home." Initiated by Builder magazine (the official publication of the National Association of Home Builders) and Pardee Homes (the Los Angeles-based developer of the Nevada Trails neighborhood in which the home was built), the project unfolded as a partnership between the magazine and the developer's Las Vegas office along with Bassenian-Lagoni Architects (Newport Beach, Calif.), Color Design Art (Los Angeles) and Lifescapes International (the Newport Beach-based landscape-architecture firm). "The Ultimate Family Home" opened in January 2004 in conjunction with
I don't know who first expressed it, but I've always welcomed the notion that "great designers are great thieves." That nugget rings so true because very few among us ever have completely original ideas and, in fact, the best designs are generally derivative of something that came before. To my mind, if some degree of larceny is part of our game as watershape designers, then one of the very best places to find borrowable ideas is a book entitled The Annotated Arch by the historian Carol Strickland (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001) - a wonderful and inspiring 180-page, beautifully illustrated book that offers a