ARTICLES Archives - Page 284 of 314

The Dirt on Soil

Watershapers are still fairly easily divided into two groups, one with its origins in the landscape trades, the other hailing from the pool industry. For all the distinctions that might be drawn between them, however, watershapers of all stripes have one very important thing in common: We all work with the stuff we find under our feet on the job site - the stuff we generally call dirt or soil. Dirt is the more inclusive of the two terms, and unless the contractor is working with a tricky site or faces compaction issues, it is simply what is carted away or rearranged to make room for a watershape. By contrast, soil is a blanket term covering

Warming to the Touch

Last time, we began a discussion of giving our clients the satisfying hot-water experience they crave with a review of basic design principles and coverage of a range of materials-selection issues. Translating the good on-site positioning and great materials we surveyed in February into a luxurious spa experience requires the designer to have an advanced understanding of the technology at work in hydrotherapy as well as a grasp of the spectrum of options available to drive and control hot-water systems. Before we address those key topics, however, it bears

Recipes for Fun

I love the fact that more and more people I talk to are referring to the bodies of water they create as works of art. At their best, watershapes do indeed possess all the aesthetic potential of

Microsoft’s corporate campus near Seattle has been the birthplace of much of the world’s most significant consumer-electronics technology. When it came time to adorn the ultramodern facility with a watershape of it own, the scope and complexity of the system was intended to reflect the scale and grandeur of the world’s most famous software company – and to fit a circumscribed space as though it had been there from time immemorial.

A Window into Nature

Take the world's most prolific consumer technology company on one hand and, on the other, its desire to augment its corporate headquarters with a natural exterior environment intended to capture geological processes that span millions of years: It's a collision of present and past, of technology and nature, that is filled with meaning as well as exciting potential. Those sorts of thoughts and paradoxes were somewhere on everyone's minds as we approached the design and installation of a grand-scale watershape at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., corporate campus. Our aim: to create a spectacular and entirely

Sound Solutions

Developing a simple, reliable swimming pool alarm system offers a remarkable range of technical challenges, observes Robert Jechart of RJE Technologies - even when your point of departure is years of experience with ultra-sophisticated military and commercial sonar technology. Here, he discusses a four-year process in which his company has addressed its goal of making watershapes safe for families with small children.

Swimming pool designs have come a long way in recent years, says design and project manager Ron Yavis of Sunshine Pools & Spas – particularly when it comes to the high-end, custom-designed, vinyl-liner pools the company specializes in designing and building for some of the continent’s most spectacular settings. To make his case for ‘custom vinyl,’ he profiles a recent project perched high above the bright waters of Canada’s Lake Okanagan.

A True Cliffhanger

For years, we at Sunshine Pools & Spas have provided high-end, custom swimming pools to a mostly affluent clientele in and around our base in Kelowna, British Columbia. Unlike many readers of this magazine, however, we specialize in satisfying those clients with vinyl-liner rather than gunite or shotcrete pools. To be sure, pools and spas of any sort are not the first things that come to mind when you think about our area, which is closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to the Sunbelt. But many residents around here do enjoy the good life and want

When a project’s designer and client are one in the same person, the level of interaction and responsiveness asked of the watershaper tends to increase dramatically, report custom builders Martha and Randy Beard. To illustrate this point, they describe a pair of projects in which a local designer built homes for herself and her family – and asked the Beards to create the perfect aquatic complements for some exquisite surroundings.

Exterior Motifs

Great watershaping is, we believe, all about creating forms within a context. The thoughtful watershaper will survey all the key elements of a project while conjuring a mental picture that's as close to the architect's vision as possible - and then base the work that follows on a solid understanding of both the design and the setting. It's always most exciting when we're asked to consult with the designer about a project before the lot has been graded and the ideas are still flowing onto the sketchpad. In those cases where the designer and homeowner are all the same person and those initial discussions involve the designer's own living space, the nature of this interaction can truly be something special. At Pure Water Pools, we've had such a privilege on two occasions, both in working with Lynn Pries, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based interior designer who has spent much of her career creating high-end residences across the United States and Europe. These days, she mostly works on one project at a time, carefully selecting and purchasing a property herself and then seeing to every design detail, inside and out, from start to finish. So far, we've built

Grapes of Joy

In the premiere issue of WaterShapes in February 1999, Brian Van Bower's first "Aqua Culture" column invoked the name of winemaker Robert Mondavi, calling him a role model for watershapers everywhere. It was a partly surprising place to start a new column, given the fact that Mondavi is neither a contractor, engineer or designer, but Bower, a wine connoisseur as well as a trailblazing watershaper, made a good case for seeing Mondavi's career as a lens through which we might better understand our own. At the time, I didn't completely appreciate the connection between Mondavi and the watershaping trades, but I decided a bit later to pick up the book, Harvests of Joy, and spend some time with it. Prepared by Mondavi with writer Paul Chutkow, the 364-page book was published in 1998 by Harcourt Brace. I know that this is quite a departure from

Material Implications

One of my guiding principles has to do with the fact that early decisions my clients and I make about materials have a huge influence on how my watershapes ultimately are designed and built. The project we've been following through the past few issues is a perfect case in point: The choice of the bluestone coping and of the one-inch glass mosaic tile for the pool's and spa's interiors started the wheels turning and definitely drove the early stages of the design process. As I've mentioned before, this project and its unforeseen problems (as well as clients who were at times unsure of exactly what

Water with a Difference

We all know how much watershapes add to the beauty of any setting, but I suspect we also tend to take for granted the integral role water plays in sustaining those environments. It's obvious that no landscape would survive long without a steady infusion of water to nurture its plants. Less obvious, however, are ways in which water can be used to make some places more hospitable to other life forms that inhabit them. This isn't really new. As has been noted in several articles published in WaterShapes, water has been used in arid climates for centuries as a prime source of "air conditioning" for