ARTICLES Archives - Page 302 of 310

For years, designer/builder Skip Phillips has applied himself to creating elegant, finely detailed watershapes for a discerning, upscale clientele. Recently, the experience of constructing a pool and spa for his own backyard led him to explore the essence of what pools and spas are really all about on a personal level – and discover a thing or two along the way about the connections between watershapes and family fun.

Made to Order

When you design and build custom swimming pools for a living, I'd guess you're always thinking somewhere in the back of your mind about what your own pool would be like if you ever got the chance to build it. In my case, when I finally did have the opportunity to design and build one for my home, I knew it had to be a complete extension of my own design philosophy, standards of construction and product choices. That was a no-brainer. What surprised me was just how much excitement and pleasure I derived from the process of seeing my own backyard take shape. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted going in. I've developed strong likes and dislikes through the years, and I knew with good degree of certainty that our pool would have a vanishing edge, an attached spa, interesting lighting and an array of beautiful finish materials. Even with all that in mind, however, landing on the perfect design that expressed all of those elements wasn't automatic by any means. As with any custom watershape, each facet of the project required consideration and a weighing of the options. This forced me to step back and decide what I thought was

No two rocks are exactly the same: Like snowflakes, each is a unique object of geological art and beauty, and, even better, they come in an infinite range of colors and textures. This variety makes them ideal for use in naturalistic watershapes and landscapes, says rock and boulder supplier Rick Bibbero, and gives discerning designers and builders the opportunity to use objects of timeless grandeur to enhance the value of the work they do.

Every Boulder Tells a Story

For some time now, watershapers have exploited the fact that naturally occurring rocks and boulders can enhance the appearance of their work. Whether used in conjunction with artificial rock or alone, you appreciate the fact that rock comes in a never-ending variety of shapes, sizes and textures - and that they can be used to add both surprise and individuality to designs. For the most part, however, designers and builders have tended to work with common local stones - fieldstone, granite or river rock - that limit their palettes when it comes to color, visual appeal and expressiveness. It can indeed be an epiphany for those who've used common stones to come across material that includes complex mineral and crystalline structures or fascinating patterns of stratification that are the product of eons of metamorphic activity within the earth's crust. With this awareness comes the realization that the palette is virtually limitless and that rockwork can now easily be found to echo the colors and exceptional nuances found in

No matter the time or place, we’ve always had a special relationship with moving water. From the ancient Egyptians who set their calendars by the seasonal flooding of the Nile to the modern tourists who line up outside Bellagio in Las Vegas to watch its water shows, there’s a fascination that can’t be denied. It’s also, says landscape architect/ pool builder Mark Holden, a past that should be explored by all contemporary watershapers.

Images in Motion

Ever since the hydraulic principles of ancient Persia were 'rediscovered' by Europeans during the Renaissance, the sky has literally been the limit for watershape designers. At the 17th-century Dutch Palace of Het Loo, for example, fountain jets that trace their developmental history at least as far back as 8th-century Persia make an emphatic statement about the power of those who commissioned them. We all marvel, and rightly so, at the waterfeatures of Renaissance Italy, the pools of Versailles in France, the fountains of the

Shocking Truths

In the spring of 1941, my mom and dad, my sister and I moved into our brand-new house on Ardmore Avenue in one of northwest Detroit's real estate developments. It was a thoroughly modern house, with all of the latest high-tech features - the garage door moved upward to open, instead of swinging left and right like barn doors, and the furnace in the basement was operated by natural gas, eliminating forever the need to shovel coal. The house cost $5,550. From an electrical standpoint, the house was up to the codes and standards of its day - albeit a far cry from what is required today. The wiring was a two-wire system with no ground. All of the receptacles had two equal-size slots, and that was just fine because anything we wished to plug into these receptacles had a two-pronged plug at the end of its cord. A fuse panel in a bedroom closet contained four 15-amp fuses. That was it: four fuses to

A Sense of Privacy

A good friend of mine once told me that his idea of the perfect yard was one where he could walk around naked - and none of his neighbors would be able to see him. What a concept! Unfortunately, few of us can afford a yard so large that we could not be seen by neighbors under any circumstances. So what can you do to create that perfect private environment? As we'll see here, you have a lot of choices. DISCOVERING PREFERENCES Many people go all the way in creating privacy by building structures that make them feel safe and enclosed. Others prefer a less claustrophobic approach, such as soft plantings. Either way, and particularly when you are dealing with watershapes where your clients may want to enjoy communing with nature in the buff, creating some type of barrier against neighbors' intruding eyes is essential. Your clients' preferences may

Thriving in the Material World

There's much to be said about this brave, new world of watershaping we're in right now - and one of the things that's most abundantly clear is that clients expect more these days: What was "good enough" before just won't cut it, and to my way of thinking, that's a very good thing! One of the areas that most reflects this increase in expectations is the selection of the materials we use. More and more people I talk to around the country are now using things they wouldn't even have considered just five years ago - things that can add tremendous

Comfort, Fun and Beauty

It's tough to keep the Big Picture in mind when the day-to-day grind seems relentless. Even so, it's important to take a step back from time to time and remind yourself of exactly

Taking inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright and features of the client’s home, pool designer and builder Michael Nantz worked a bit of backyard magic. By carefully shaping lines, contours, textures and elevations, he crafted a swimming pool and reflection pond that balance water with wood, hardscape and landscape – and accomplished a high-flying design with a decidedly down-to-earth price tag.

Mid-Range Mastery

It's a basic and important idea: Quality and beauty can and should be provided across a wide range of pricing levels. In my work, I design and build many residential and commercial watershapes with budgets well into six figures; I also tackle many projects firmly planted in the five-figure range. No matter the budget, I believe strongly that I owe it to my clients to deliver a watershape of lasting beauty each and every time. Fact is, quality and artistry often can be achieved with a distinctly uncomplicated program. By bringing a watershape's design into harmony with the architecture of the home and/or other adjoining structures, it's often possible to enhance aesthetics and value without dramatically increasing the price tag. Take the project seen here as an example: Through careful placement and shaping of the vessel, artistic edge treatments and minor elevation changes - none of which added appreciably to the cost - I left my clients with a watershape they love at a price they could

Steel structures may never entirely replace gunite shells for competition pools, says Joe Esser of Kiefer Pool & Equipment Co., but the ease of construction and durability of stainless vessels make it an interesting race to watch – particularly because steel opens competition-pool projects to a much wider range of builders. To demonstrate the whys and hows, he leads you through the construction process step by step, showing just what it takes to assemble these modular marvels.

Modular Marvels

It used to be that competition pools were the sole province of big engineering/construction companies with their substantial assets, impressive inventories of equipment, huge labor forces and established skills in working with low-tolerance plans and specifications. The arrival on the scene of modular stainless steel pool systems has changed all that - and it's a good thing, because so many competition and training pools are being built today that there are not enough qualified construction companies of the traditional sort to get around to installing them all. This boom is a product of both the popularity of aquatic sports and the

From start to finish, observes Rick Anderson, the process of stream building isn’t that complex or exotic. But in addition to good planning, he says, these projects require thoughtful spontaneity and a subtlety in the work itself that defines success or failure in creating streams that look ‘natural.’ Here, in the first of a series on stream construction, Anderson starts at the beginning – with the land and the layout and excavation phases.

Cutting a Channel

Building a stream that looks as though it was actually completed by Mother Nature is no small challenge. To make the illusion work, the watershaper quite literally "shapes" the basic elements of the stream - its path, width, depth, outcroppings, falls, transitions and plantings - all with an eye toward mimicking natural designs. To a large degree, the process is different from that of designing and building a pond, pool or fountain. In those cases, the watershape generally goes in the ground almost exactly where and how it's been drawn. With streams, however, the differences between