ARTICLES Archives - Page 76 of 312

The New WaterShapes.com!

I celebrated another birthday on September 9, and one of the coolest gifts I received was the word that a major renovation of WaterShapes.com was ready for final review - and would, crossing that hurdle, be ready for public launch alongside release of the September 20 edition of the WaterShapes newsletter - this very day! It's our first major update in several years and the first

Witnessing Transitions

‘For all the talk about the spectrum of watershaping – the existence of those who, on one extreme, pursue high-quality, truly custom projects and those on the other who live in a low-end, cookie-cutter realm – I must say that I’ve yet to run into anyone from the fringes of latter camp who’s stepped forward to

Koi Selection ABCs

Relatively speaking, building a Koi pond is often the easy part. The tough part? Working with clients to select the fish who will call the new watershape "home." I have to say that I've been bitten hard by the Koi bug and have spent countless hours learning as much as I can about these beautiful fish. It's a level of involvement that

Seven watershapes on three levels, each one as dramatic as the next? The concept alone is breathtaking, report Claude Kershner IV and Jeremy Guillen, who say a great design and a superb project team gave them exactly the support they needed to deliver perfection.

Every Piece in Place

When you step up to tackle what might possibly be the most challenging job your company has ever pursued, there's definitely a gut check involved. Do you have the required staff? Can you call on top-flight subcontractors? Do you have the stamina to get involved and stay involved for the duration of a seriously long, seriously complex project? As we found in building the seven watershapes

Another Look

Before I walk away from my little series of blogs on big transitions, I want to call attention to renovations, which I consider to be both a generational phenomenon as well as the greatest potential source of projects and market growth through the next

Avoiding Trouble

After years of serving as an expert witness in construction-defect cases, Paolo Benedetti knows what can happen when contractors fail to deliver the expected results. Here, he covers a set of practices aimed at keeping builders on the right path -- and out of the courtroom.

Sweet Hospitality

It's been many years since I spent any time wandering in the mid-Atlantic states, but I warmly remember multiple visits to cities from Washington, D.C., all the way down to Savannah, Ga. - mostly related to business but with generous helpings of great food and southern hospitality added in for good measure. I particularly recall a couple days I spent in Charleston, S.C., in

Illuminating Challenges

The lighting of pools is much more challenging than it once was, notes Graham Orme, mostly because their contours are so much more intricate than they were even 20 years ago. Here, he starts a new series that will guide all of us toward more 'enlightened' results.

Presented with a smallish space that opened out onto a great big one, Jeromey Naugle found himself playing with views near and far in all sorts of complex ways. The result is a composition that met his clients' desires -- and offered him an interesting insight into his design process.

Critical Distance

I love it when a project teaches me a lesson about my design process. In this case, it was just a smallish insight - but it had a profound effect on the outcome just the same. I'd seen this property for the first time while the home was under construction. It was a large building, about three-quarters complete, that occupied most of a fairly large parcel. The clients were happy to show me around, let me figure things out and come

Life’s Absurdities

‘If you’ve ever designed or installed commercial swimming pools in the United States,’ wrote Brian Van Bower in his column for the August 2007 issue of WaterShapes, ‘it’s likely you’re well acquainted with just how strange certain health department standards (and the officials who enforce them) can be.’ ‘I believe things have gone so far wrong,’ he added, ‘that it’s time for the industry to do something about it. Yes, it will require a concerted, long-term effort to get anything done, but some of these issues are so ridiculous that