Pools & Spas
Through the years, I've been involved in a number of amazing watershaping projects in the southern California region. I'm particularly comfortable with hillside work and have designed and built breathtaking pools and spas on my own, but I spend most of my time these days building to the specifications of ambitious architects and designers who know exactly what they want but
As an independent designer of custom watershapes, I've learned a lot about self-reliance and the degree of passion it takes to persuade clients to come along with me in exploring opportunities to turn backyard swimming pools into exceptional works of art. I've also learned how important it is to play well with others. Earlier in my career, when I
As is true of many designers, I carry a large number of unusual ideas in the back of my mind, waiting for the right site, the right client and the right project to pull them out and put them to use. Some of these ideas are innovative or even wild and most of them are unconventional - otherwise, they would have found quicker paths to my drawing board. In the project covered in this article, I was lucky enough to break out two of these special ideas - one an unusual transition from the home's upper level down to the poolscape, the other in the form of
As an engineering-oriented designer/builder, I know that it simplifies a project if I'm working with like-minded clients: They tend to listen well and get a quick grip on crucial details that have an influence on the outcome. They also tend to operate on the conservative side of the construction spectrum, preferring not to take unnecessary risks for themselves or their families, friends and neighbors. In the project discussed here, not only was the client an engineering and general contractor, but he and his wife were successful real estate investors with extensive holdings. As a result, they had the wherewithal, knowledge and desire to have the pool and spa behind their San Diego-area home stay put on the middle of a long
The backyard-design process, it's been said, is something like completing a jigsaw puzzle: You start with a framed space and assemble available pieces to fill in the picture. But there are two problems with this common analogy: First, the number of available pieces far exceeds the physical capacity of the frame and, second, there are no precut tabs or notches to guide placement of the selected pieces. So you'd be closer to the mark if you said that design is like the worst, most challenging jigsaw puzzle ever - and even then, the typical backyard-design task is much harder. Shining a light on this process is
As we were wrapping up a WaterShapes article called "Working at Water's Edge" back in the fall of 2018, it occurred to me that there was another story to be told about one of the projects highlighted in the text. In that article (click here), a pool I wrote about was set up on the edge of a large, manmade lake. I briefly noted that I'd been called to the site as a consultant after having seen the place several years earlier as a designer/builder who hadn't won the contract. In this article, I'll go back to my initial contacts with the client and tell a fuller story of a trying relationship that, slowly and with great difficulty,
If I've learned one truth about working with water in confined areas, it's that success is most often measured by how much more spacious an added watershape makes those areas seem. The funny thing in this particular case is that the yard wasn't especially small, sloping away from a formal house down to a rustic cottage set on the edge of the property. What was crowded was the upper-level area into which we decided to insert a big part of the pool: It was hemmed in on one side by the home and on the other by the lot's setback - a span of maybe 28 feet - below which the available space opened up and flowed down for about 30 feet to the cottage. In quick order, I found myself confronting three
From the start, this one was all about reflections. The client was building a beautiful new home in Paradise Valley, an older, high-end suburb of Phoenix, Ariz., that nestles up against the base of Camelback Mountain. His greatest desire was to pull the dramatic structure and its setting together with a big, courtyard-style pool that would offer him special, unique perspectives on his surroundings, both up close and in the distance. To make it happen, the home builder had taken some pencil sketches provided by the client and his interior designer and handed them off to his
My recent article in WaterShapes left readers in some suspense. As reported last time (click here), we were most of the way through the design process and were actually getting ready to start important work on site when the homeowners sprung something new on us. They'd just returned from a trip to Europe, and they'd been so inspired by what they'd seen that they wondered if we could inject a sense of the "Old World" into the project. The goal had previously been about creating a naturalistic setting in which wilderness seemed intent on reclaiming the space. Their fresh desire was to make explicit the notion that a
There's a lot to be said for working with the same homeowners through extended periods on various projects on single sites. From easier communications and familiarity with personalities to full awareness of site dynamics and the capabilities of local talent, the advantages of these long-term relationship quickly collect in long lists. In this particular case, we at Hess Landscape Architects (Lansdale, Pa.) have worked on one particular property for a pair of clients for ten years now. This has included a variety of projects on an estate that covers
