Professional Watershaping
‘What’s the use of knowing about history?’ That’s the question Mark Holden asked to start his Currents column in the July 2008 issue. ‘For many of us, the answer to that question seems so obvious that it comes as a shock to find out just how many people in the watershaping and landscape fields don’t grasp the all-encompassing significance of our collective past – but it shouldn’t. ‘Using my own career as an example, . . . I confess that I waltzed through more than a few early years as an aspiring landscape architect and watershaper in blissful ignorance of the history of
In Part 1 of this article, we explored the nature and variety of the possible disagreements that can arise when couples really get down to the business of saying what they want in a backyard watershape or landscape project. (To see that item, click here.) These conflicts can be
When couples get together to plan their backyards, sparks frequently fly. Once they really dig into the process and start defining their individual desires, they find all too often that their wish lists are actually worlds apart. As an outdoor designer, I’ve worked with couples who’ve run into these sorts of vision-related snags at some point in the process, and it all boils down to
By Randy Beard Through the years, I’ve had the good fortune to work on a wide range of difficult sites and been forced to familiarize myself with all of the technologies and techniques that go into making these projects work. The two videos linked below offer a case in point: We were called in to build a pool at the base of an oceanfront lot rising
Here’s a quick tour of the new WaterShapes.com, starting with the pulldown menus at the top of the home page: q Articles. This section already includes about a year’s worth of the information that’s been published in our twice-monthly newsletters. Right away, all new newsletter features and articles will be uploaded to the site immediately; within a few months, everything we’ve ever published in newsletter form will be ready and available to all readers
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
