ARTICLES Archives - Page 66 of 317

Farewell, 2018!

As the year has rambled toward its conclusion, I've been reminded over and over that it's been an amazing 2018 for watershapers, watershaping and WaterShapes. q For watershapers, my sense is that 2018 has been a breakout year

It's a play pad with a difference: While offering ample opportunities for vigorous summer fun, notes Peter Arnold, the area's looping set of spray rings are the visual heart of this Canadian housing development -- even in winter when there are multiple feet of snow on the ground.

A Splashy Statement

It was the perfect confluence of needs and ideas: Mattamy Homes, a Canadian developer based in Toronto, was working on a project in Edmonton, Alberta - a new community called Stillwater that they wanted to elevate with an "amenity center." This key space, we learned, was meant to promote healthy, active lifestyles by offering residents a play area that would include both a skating rink and a unique splash pad. As planned, the community was set up with wilderness areas, hiking trails and other opportunities meant to encourage enjoyment of the great outdoors. To capture that spirit in the splash pad and playground, Mattamy Homes enlisted the services of Calgary, Alberta-based Park N Play Design, a designer and installer of custom indoor and outdoor recreation spaces throughout Canada. The resulting splash-pad design includes a large, custom-fabricated set of spray rings that provides fun for children of all ages while at the same time creating an eye-catching, artistic visual at the heart of

Water Wisdom

Our human attraction to water is well documented, observes Lauren Stack, but none of us are automatically comfortable around it, nor do we often learn to swim without access to lessons. That's a pair of issues this article addresses while pointing toward a compelling aquatic future.

Paths of Discovery

India's stepwells are truly amazing, but relatively few people know anything about them. Victoria Lautman wants to change all that, reporting on their long history in a book -- and in a series for WaterShapes on three of the country's most wondrous architectural and cultural treasures.

Engaging Ideas

This edition of the WaterShapes newsletter carries two unusual articles. One is Victoria Lautman's piece on the stepwells of India; the other is Lauren Stack's look at water-related trends and the importance of helping more people learn to

Instead of using soils and structural engineers to prepare plans tailored to a site's specific needs, builders sometimes order generic engineering plans and hope everything will work out for the best. That's a debatable decision, writes Paolo Benedetti, for reasons he lays out here.

Weighing the Options

In recent years, I've witnessed or participated in enjoyable conversations about the fact that pools, spas, fountains and other waterfeatures are now more complex than they've ever been. What I've heard and seen less often, however, is equivalent bantering about the fact that engineering plans for such projects must keep pace if these elaborate watershapes are to perform - as they should - well into the future. In this context of progress and success, it should trouble watershapers that large numbers of builders persist in relying on generic structural plans when it's time to break ground on their projects - even on those that

Roundabout Ingenuity

My recent time in Philadelphia was actually a return after a long break: When my brother lived there in the 1970s and '80s, I would frequently extend business trips when I was in the area to spend time with him in what became one of my favorite cities. I haven't done much more than pass through since he moved away, but my daughter lives there now and has given me a great reason to renew my acquaintance with the place. Among the coolest things

Reimagining a classic pool is a tall order, especially when the original was a legendary regional favorite. But that's the task that confronted Gary Novitski and his colleagues, who started by cleaning the slate and then delivering four new watershapes to meet modern-day aquatic needs.

Wabash Cannonballs

With the effects of the Great Depression still rocking the economy in the mid-1930s, the Works Progress Administration became a major employer and creative force that put many still-treasured public facilities on the map. In fact, there are few cities in the country that don't boast a park, bridge, post office or some other public structure built by some of the millions of laborers who found work through the WPA. In 1937, Vincennes, Ind., was a particularly fortunate beneficiary of WPA's prowess in the form of the Rainbow Beach Aquatic Center - one of the most innovative and distinctive of all such facilities built up to that time. The goals were two: to provide jobs for the unemployed and to address an alarming increase in

Viva Las Vegas!

I've just returned from the latest International Pool|Spa|Patio Expo, a bit weary of foot but heartened by the many conversations I had with old friends as well as brand-new acquaintances. The show itself ran true to form, with

As glass-tile specialist Jimmy Reed sees it, the earlier he gets involved in a project, the better. In this case, however, he joined the project team a bit late -- which led to some unusual and expensive consequences as well as tough decisions having to do with layout and visual flow.

An All-Tile Adventure

This was one of those cases where a project that offers all the indications of a direct path to success took a couple of weird turns that complicated things in unusual ways. The pool and spa are located high up in Trousdale Estates, a canyon-hugging neighborhood above Beverly Hills, Calif. The views are magnificent all the way to downtown Los Angeles in one direction and to the Pacific Ocean in another - and the spaces in which the pool and separate spa had been placed took the fullest possible advantage of those prospects. Our client was a multifaceted home-design/build company that had a distinguished track record with this sort of all-concrete