ARTICLES Archives - Page 70 of 317

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.

It's been an honor to restore the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle, writes Matthew Reynolds. But working under its shell posed multiple challenges, from cramped spaces and hard-to-track piping runs to the constant awareness they were tinkering with a precious cultural treasure.

Beneath the Shell

It's not often that an opportunity to work on anything as renowned as the Neptune Pool comes around. Built first as a reflecting pool, transformed into an oval-shaped plunge pool and, as Hearst Castle assumed massive proportions, ultimately finished as a 350,000-gallon swimming pool that's probably the most widely recognized watershape in the world, it's a pleasure just to see it, let alone help preserve it for future generations. We at Terracon, an engineering firm based in Olathe, Kans., came to the project through our acquisition late in 2014 of Rowley International, the aquatic design and engineering company based in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. William Rowley, its principal and a specialist in sophisticated aquatic complexes - and, equally important

Taking a chance with someone who wasn't yet his client, Skip Phillips sketched up an alternative to a proposed pool renovation and ended up completely transforming a large backyard space. It was suddenly a major project -- and then came a long list of efficiency-oriented details!

Changing Spaces

I've noticed through the years that, from my perspective at least, some of my favorite projects come with the best stories. The poolscape seen here is definitely one of these. The client started things off by purchasing a house in an ultra-high-end neighborhood, then personalized it with all sorts of details, materials and finishes that turned the existing house into an extremely comfortable Country French-style estate. The one element it lacked, he figured, was a nice swimming pool. While he was considering his options, the home next door - one with