ARTICLES Archives - Page 65 of 312

Wrapping up his discussion of the restoration of the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle, Matthew Reynolds covers the painstaking process of resurfacing the shell with new marble as an exact replica of the original and making ready for the reintroduction of 350,000 gallons of water.

Interior Splendor

Working outdoors in the California sun is typically seen as a desirable perk, especially when, as in this case, the on-site alternative was working below ground in a confined labyrinth of narrow passages with limitless opportunities for banging your head. But here, it's my general sense that the plumbers working below ground on Hearst Castle's Neptune Pool (San Simeon, Calif.) had an easier row to hoe than did the marble applicators working in the open air. For one thing, tasks performed on the interior surface of the pool were

Proportional Response

‘One of the real tricks in any art form can be the challenge of exercising restraint,’ wrote Brian Van Bower to open his Aqua Culture column in September 2003. ‘Bigger isn’t always better, and both scale and size do matter. In other words, just because you can create something grand, it doesn’t always mean that you should.’ ‘This principle of proportionality has a sharp, specific meaning in the world of the custom watershaper,’ he continued, ‘especially when

Valued and Valuable

I'm developing a new appreciation for wise watershapers who brief their clients about a swimming pool's longer-term lifecycle. Whether it comes as part of their presentations or gets included in final orientation meetings, I see this practice as being important to

If a client asks you to get rid of an old deck all the way up to the coping without adding a new deck, you should think things through before taking the job. If you don't, advises Scott Cohen, things can go very wrong -- and you might be on the hook for a substantial shell-repair bill.

Subtracting a Deck

Lots of pools built in the 1960s and '70s and even through the '80s were surrounded by ribbons of concrete decking of uniform width, all the way around. Frequently, those decks were too narrow to make them of much use for more than walking around the pool: lounge chairs are too long to be set up facing the water, and a poolside table and chairs cover far too much ground to be included. The solution that runs through the heads of lots of homeowners is simply to

When the homeowner suddenly (and completely) changed his mind about this project's direction, it was easy to slide into a new groove, says Andrew Kaner, simply because the fresh start offered so many opportunities to transform the pool, deck and views from so-so to spectacular.

On the Waterfront

Did you ever have a client who knew exactly what he or she wanted in a project, only to change direction once he or she heard the price? That happened with the poolscape discussed in this article - but with an unusual twist. The homeowner, a prominent South Florida businessperson, had purchased the waterfront property with its existing pool. And he wasn't finished: He also purchased two neighboring homes, flattening one to make way for a sculpture garden and setting up the other as staff housing. When we saw the site for the first time, the main residence was

Stone Stepping

‘Stairs, to borrow an immortal phrase from Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect.” ’ That’s how Bruce Zaretsky opened his August 2008 column in WaterShapes, then continued: ‘[I]f my observations through the years tell me anything, the stairs set in far too many landscapes are strictly utilitarian objects – no more than a means of getting from one level of a space to another. The only thought that seems to go into some of them has to do with avoiding trip hazards, which is important but hardly the most

By the Books

One of my favorite destinations in downtown Los Angeles is the Central Library. Not only is it an amazing resource with the books and recordings it circulates to citizens and scholars, but it also houses wonderful display spaces where all sorts of thoughtfully curated exhibitions await visitors. I've stopped in many times since the 1960s and count it among southern California's

Hurtful Impulses

The stories I've seen hurt my heart. There was the one about the woman who accosted a teenage boy who'd been invited to swim in a neighborhood pool, telling him to get out or she'd call

Building this golf course wasn't a subtle process, notes Ken Alperstein. As he discusses in the first of a pair of articles on the project, they started by knocking over a South Korean mountain, then, after extensive contouring, began working on two heavily regulated water systems.

Moving a Mountain

We've participated in the construction of lots of great golf courses through the years, but this one was something special. It started for us at Pinnacle Design (Palm Desert, Calif.) with a call from one of the world's top golf-course architects, Ted Robinson, Jr., who let us know that we had to rush to prepare a presentation for a client in South Korea. As he explained the situation, if we couldn't win over the chairman of the conglomerate that was building the 27-hole course, the job would go to

Healing Ways

Through the years, Bruce Zaretsky has designed enough healing gardens that he knows just how comforting they can be for patients, caregivers and loved ones. But they only work, he notes, when designers keep some basic principles and several user-specific design factors in mind.