Pools & Spas
Helena Arahuete joined the staff of John Lautner's architectural firm in the early 1960s, at a point where he was turning out some of his most spectacular work. Indeed, Lautner can indisputably be said to have designed some of the most beautiful and unusual homes built in the second half of the 20th Century. An apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright's who studied with the master at Taliesen, Lautner was an exponent of the philosophy and discipline known as "Organic Architecture," an approach Arahuete, now an eminent architect in her own right, has continued to use and refine while running the firm that still bears Lautner's name. She is now one of the world's leading practitioners of Wright's and Lautner's approach to creating unique structures that are intricately and intimately tied to their surroundings. She is also so firm a proponent of the integration of watershapes into those architectural forms that in April 2000, she carried her message to the first Genesis 3 Level II Design School, held in Islamorada, Fla. - and welcomed an opportunity to present some of Lautner's work here by way of defining the place watershapers have at the design table with
Let's talk about really big boulders - the five- to eight-foot kind that weigh in at two to five tons apiece - and how they should be integrated into watershapes. The whole process of placing these big boulders begins with the design of the pool and relates to the kind of scale you're trying to achieve. Big boulders make other features seem small by comparison and can often overwhelm (rather than accent) a design if
This really wasn't a job for the timid. The ground was unstable, access was limited, and the customer could afford to make massive changes along the way. Other than that, of course, the project was a piece of cake. The truth is, I enjoy a good challenge. People who know me well are aware that I revel in tackling jobs that test my mettle - and this was definitely one of those cases. Ultimately, it turned out to be one of the most satisfying and beautiful projects I've been involved with in a long while. The site is located on
When you design and build custom swimming pools for a living, I'd guess you're always thinking somewhere in the back of your mind about what your own pool would be like if you ever got the chance to build it. In my case, when I finally did have the opportunity to design and build one for my home, I knew it had to be a complete extension of my own design philosophy, standards of construction and product choices. That was a no-brainer. What surprised me was just how much excitement and pleasure I derived from the process of seeing my own backyard take shape. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted going in. I've developed strong likes and dislikes through the years, and I knew with good degree of certainty that our pool would have a vanishing edge, an attached spa, interesting lighting and an array of beautiful finish materials. Even with all that in mind, however, landing on the perfect design that expressed all of those elements wasn't automatic by any means. As with any custom watershape, each facet of the project required consideration and a weighing of the options. This forced me to step back and decide what I thought was
It's a basic and important idea: Quality and beauty can and should be provided across a wide range of pricing levels. In my work, I design and build many residential and commercial watershapes with budgets well into six figures; I also tackle many projects firmly planted in the five-figure range. No matter the budget, I believe strongly that I owe it to my clients to deliver a watershape of lasting beauty each and every time. Fact is, quality and artistry often can be achieved with a distinctly uncomplicated program. By bringing a watershape's design into harmony with the architecture of the home and/or other adjoining structures, it's often possible to enhance aesthetics and value without dramatically increasing the price tag. Take the project seen here as an example: Through careful placement and shaping of the vessel, artistic edge treatments and minor elevation changes - none of which added appreciably to the cost - I left my clients with a watershape they love at a price they could
It used to be that competition pools were the sole province of big engineering/construction companies with their substantial assets, impressive inventories of equipment, huge labor forces and established skills in working with low-tolerance plans and specifications. The arrival on the scene of modular stainless steel pool systems has changed all that - and it's a good thing, because so many competition and training pools are being built today that there are not enough qualified construction companies of the traditional sort to get around to installing them all. This boom is a product of both the popularity of aquatic sports and the
Watershapes come in lots of configurations and sizes, but when you get right down to it, they mostly share two basic materials of construction - concrete and steel - that in combination have the potential to withstand generations of use. Fashioning these structures is at the heart of what watershapers do: Every-thing else, from the plumbing or the plaster to the tile or the decking, is really secondary. Sure, the pool won't function without plumbing or look pretty without tile, but it wouldn't even exist without its skeleton of steel and its concrete flesh. For all that importance, however, most people tend to give the steel in particular little thought or care. It's invisible once the gunite is in place, so there's a tendency even among those who know better to blow it off and save a few bucks by using too little steel or by doing quick, sloppy work. And why should you care? No one will ever see what you've done, right? Actually, given the role that steel plays in the durability and viability of the concrete structure, this should be the last place to
Everything about this job was big: the budget, the number of watershapes, the upscale location and, especially, the customer's expectations. The owners, Town Realty of Milwaukee, envisioned their five watershapes as the key amenities for a new condominium development in Cocoa Beach, Fla., a signature element that would woo potential buyers who visited the 124-unit vacation complex. To reach that goal, their project team gathered aquatic experts from all over the Sunshine State to create the plans and specifications, supervise the bidding process, oversee construction and
It's an art form that connects modern craftspeople to those of the distant past. In fact, the roots of mosaic tiling can be traced to Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., where temple walls were decorated with simple earthenware fragments. Centuries later, the ancient Greeks decorated their courtyards with large and small pebble mosaics, and sophisticated examples of mosaic work are found later in everything from Turkish mosques to Italian basilicas. The Romans, however, probably pushed mosaics about as far as any culture could in the first few centuries A.D. They adorned baths, pools, spas, floors and walls of important buildings as well as humbler residences with intricate mosaics made up of ceramic, stone, glass and marble. Recent years may have seen a revival of this ancient artistic technique, but as can be seen in the accompanying photographs, what many of today's designers are doing with classic forms is a real step forward - a departure from tradition that has made today's mosaics a thoroughly modern form of
Back in 1987 and particularly in California and Florida, the surfacing industry found itself in the middle of an unfortunate wave of plaster failures. Some people blamed the material, others blamed application techniques - and traces of the debate continue to this day. The situation was truly desperate in some areas, so much so that it drove many plasterers to seek new materials and techniques - anything to escape the cycle of negativity. Our firm in San Diego, for example, moved early and became the first in our county to apply exposed-aggregate finishes. Today, more than 80% of
