Professional Watershaping
In lining up this string of videos on dealing with and overcoming access and/or excavation issues, I thought after the last one that I’d run through most of the possibilities and could put down my video camera for a while. But then I ran into a site that offered super-slim access (no more than a smallish wheelbarrow could get through) and awful, heavy soil that left me with a need for yet another get-it-done solution. My initial supposition had been that we’d need to
In approaching big jobs with challenging access issues, sometimes you get lucky and can figure out an excavation solution that doesn’t involve the one we had no choice but to use in the project shown in this video. In other entries in this series, I’ve shown how to get the digging done with mini-Bobcats, conveyor systems and big disposal chutes. This time, we had a situation in which none of those options
When you approach a design challenge, it always helps to be aware of the work of those who’ve gone before. That’s why college programs for designers, including architects and landscape architects, so often incorporate courses intended to teach students about the history of art and architecture. It’s a foundation that
Sometimes you think you have everything breaking your way: large job site, easy access and free rein to design and build a great and beautiful project. But even in these dream cases, you can run into the unexpected from time to time. That certainly was true of the project examined in this video. The property is located in a
Consider the way I spent my time yesterday: I had breakfast in an upscale eatery to discuss teaching a class. I went through a phone interview with a publication’s editor. I hung up the phone and headed over to a job site I knew would be a total mess after a night that had given us an unexpected inch of rain. Adding to the uncertainty, I was to
The first two videos in this sequence were about access, and this one is, too – but with a difference. Where the other projects challenged us with tight access, and we had to figure out ways to take care of the excavation spoils on relatively level lots, this one is a case where we were able to take advantage of
In the last video I offered here, we were working on a site with access so limited that only mini-Bobcats were able to negotiate the passageway from the backyard to the street. That space was positively luxurious compared to the one highlighted in my
For a long time now, I’ve specialized in working with upscale clients along the coast of Orange County, Calif., a place where access is often restricted and where construction can honestly be described as challenging – lots of hilltop work above steep, fragile slopes. My history
‘Why isn’t the appropriate use of water a defining, central component in the education of landscape architects?’ That’s how Mark Holden began a series of articles called “Future Class” in the March 2007 edition of WaterShapes. He continued: ‘That question has rattled around in my head for a long, long time, basically because it has no adequate or satisfactory
When I started my career more than 20 years ago, habit and standards dictated that swimming pool plaster should be white. By that time, happily, a handful of suppliers had begun offering colored aggregates, and then products including PebbleTec began expanding the palette to a point where about a dozen colors were available, give or take a few. These were shades of blue, mostly, ranging through to grays and darker grays. Then, about ten years ago,
