Pools & Spas
Through the past few years, a number of my most interesting projects have been all about revising outdoor environments for upscale residential clients, generally with the thought in my mind of integrating exterior and interior spaces. That seems simple enough, but these tasks have frequently been complicated by unusual site features and the fact that what clients want at the outset isn’t exactly what the site seems to require. In a few of these situations, I’ve needed to reset the stage entirely by remodeling significant architectural elements of the house to fuse indoor and outdoor spaces; in others, I’ve had to revise and reconfigure everything on site except the house. As I roll through these various scenarios, the thought I always keep uppermost in mind has to do with making everything seem as though
Delivering the keynote address to the World Aquatic Health Conference in September 2008, Dr. Steven N. Blair asked a simple question: Does swimming reduce your risk of dying? As he stressed then and repeats in detail here, the answer is a resounding yes. Indeed, the findings he offers stand among the most compelling reasons ever offered to promote swimming and other forms of aquatic exercise to the general public. Medical science has long seen exercise as a crucial part of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, there’s an enormous amount of evidence about its health benefits – so much that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services recently stepped up with its first-ever guidelines for physical activity. Lots of individuals, organizations and other entities have proclaimed the positive outcomes of exercise through the years, but never before had the U.S. government published an official set of guidelines. These government recommendations were largely the result of
Every so often, our company is confronted by the belief among certain design professionals that, as it is used by the pool industry, shotcrete is simply not viable for use as structural concrete in high-profile watershaping projects. The assumption, I’ve learned, is that the pool industry is filled with contractors and specification writers who know little about the material and therefore tend to produce substandard results. I could argue the merits of the case, but let it suffice to say that the upshot of this widespread belief is that institutions and commercial clients hesitate to use shotcrete and instead prefer cast-in-place concrete, which they perceive as having greater quality and reliability in watershape applications. We at Drakeley Swimming Pool Co. (Bethlehem, Conn.) recently encountered exactly that prejudice: A private high school that was in the process of designing and building a state-of-the-art aquatic center and an
From its very first issue, this magazine has made one key point over and over again: Soil conditions determine the way a watershape’s shell is constructed; to achieve success in construction, the approach must be established by a competent engineer and followed on site. Through the years, numerous contributors to the magazine have described the process of placing watershapes on hillsides or dealing with soil conditions that lead to differential settlement. So far, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the challenges of working in locations where
It’s not unusual for watershapers to have their signatures. For some, these noteworthy effects extend from their educations and personal design preferences, while for others, inspiration comes from distinctive qualities found in local landscapes or from tailoring designs to suit the characters of their clients. In our case, we at Hydroscapes (Fountain Hills, Ariz.) pull on all of the above and more in our design work. Through the years, we’ve done a lot of projects associated with Contemporary-style architecture – a specialty, perhaps, but not what we’d call a signature. This work has led us to invest lots of time in studying modern masters including Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner – and, as they did, in learning about Japanese garden design and the work of the great Craftsmen architects such as Greene & Greene. Those influences flow neatly together for us because all of those designers embrace simplicity of line and form as well as elegance in the use of colors and materials. It doesn’t hurt that these legacies suit our personal tastes as a husband-and-wife design team – and it helps even more that a majority of our clients these days seem to start with similar ideas in mind: They want
On many pool projects, the excavation phase often calls for the addition of competent fill to establish a foundation solid enough to support a concrete structure. That extra step can be both laborious and expensive, observes watershaper Paolo Benedetti, who uses this fresh entry in his new series on sensible solutions to common technical problems to describe a time- and money-saving alternative to standard methods of soil remediation.
There’s no substitute for working closely with clients. I typically spend many hours conversing with them, discussing everything from their travels and artistic interests to the specifics of the project at hand. It’s the only way I know of to ensure that I’m following the best path in developing a design to meet their needs. That approach was taken to something of an extreme in the project pictured here: Not only did I devise the outdoor spaces, including a large swimming pool and a host of other exterior features, but I also was extensively involved in building the house itself. It was an exciting process for me, one that yielded positive outcomes and that, to this day, is still one of my favorites. Interestingly, however, my association with these wonderful clients actually began a couple years before this project commenced – an encounter that resulted in no work for me at all and also
Most of the time, residential construction projects that stretch beyond a half-decade in the making involve significant delays or work stoppages. The project pictured here – known hereabouts as “The Shell Pool” – took nearly six years to complete, and what’s unusual about it is that it was basically a continuous effort. Even when we weren’t on site, seldom did a day go by when we weren’t involved on some level in design work, engineering and/or project planning. Now that it’s finished, I can say without hesitation that this was the most detailed, refined, all-consuming project we at Platinum Poolcare Aquatech of Wheeling, Ill., have ever tackled. I can’t begin to calculate the collective number of hours spent in client and staff meetings, phone conversations, skull sessions and design-revision meetings – and that doesn’t include time spent on site in bringing this amazing project to fruition. Even compared to the many intricate commercial projects we’ve worked on through the years, this one set a new standard in my experience with respect both to the spirit of innovation and the mountains of patience required to get the job done. Today, with all that effort behind us, it’s a rare pleasure to
Last October, I had the pleasure of attending the American Society of Landscape Architects’ convention in Philadelphia. While there, I spent much of my time sitting in the WaterShapes booth in the exhibit hall and found myself fielding a surprising number of questions from landscape architects about aquatic safety – and particularly on the new federal regulations and standards having to do with entrapment prevention. At first, I thought it was strange that this was such a hot topic among landscape architects, who, as a rule, haven’t been
Sometimes, the main idea that will drive a design jumps to mind as soon as you see the site. That was the case with the project covered here: When I pulled up to the gate of the property - high in the affluent hills of Bel Air, Calif. - what I found wasn't a big, showy home of the sort that have increasingly come to characterize the neighborhood; instead, what I saw was a place defined by subtlety and elegance. It all started with the gate's beautiful brick pilaster, beyond which I could just glimpse a large, lovely home with the distinctive architecture of an English manor house. Even though I hadn't met the clients yet or seen the entire job site, I was already convinced that the project would be
