Professional Watershaping
In my first WaterShapes column last month, I made the point that small jobs can and should be pursued with every bit as much creativity and energy as large ones. No matter the size of the job, my task as designer and installer is to make all of my clients happy by sharing with them the value, joy and comfort of which watershapes and landscapes are capable. Indeed, making that happen is my charge from initiation of the design process right through any changes and adjustments and all the way up to the final washing of the driveway and topdressing of any damaged sections of lawn. On any scale or level, what I've noticed is that the smallest projects are quite often
For all the talk about the spectrum of watershaping - the existence of those who, on one extreme, pursue high-quality, truly custom projects and those on the other who live in a low-end, cookie-cutter realm - I must say that I've yet to run into anyone from the fringes of latter camp who's stepped forward to say, "Yes, our company crawls in the dirt to win jobs based purely on price, and it's only possible because we deliberately do substandard work." Quite to the contrary, people in the watershaping business at all levels will tell you that they're in business to provide a quality end product that delivers real value to clients whether the average cost of their output is
For all the talk about the spectrum of watershaping - the existence of those who, on one extreme, pursue high-quality, truly custom projects and those on the other who live in a low-end, cookie-cutter realm - I must say that I've yet to run into anyone from the fringes of latter camp who's stepped forward to say, "Yes, our company crawls in the dirt to win jobs based purely on price, and it's only possible because we deliberately do substandard work." Quite to the contrary, people in the watershaping business at all levels will tell you that they're in business to provide a quality end product that delivers real value to clients whether the average cost of their output is
Does the size of a project or its budget correlate with its creativity or quality? I know many of us have clients who think that way, believing the more money they spend, the better product they're going to get - and my best guess is that there are lots of watershapers and landscape professionals who buy into that model as well. We all come to this view honestly; because all through our lives we're bombarded by cultural messages suggesting that bigger/grander/more is always better: From reality shows on television that embrace all things affluent to images in books and magazines where the most celebrated properties are always owned by the very rich, we have been told incessantly that
Does the size of a project or its budget correlate with its creativity or quality? I know many of us have clients who think that way, believing the more money they spend, the better product they're going to get - and my best guess is that there are lots of watershapers and landscape professionals who buy into that model as well. We all come to this view honestly; because all through our lives we're bombarded by cultural messages suggesting that bigger/grander/more is always better: From reality shows on television that embrace all things affluent to images in books and magazines where the most celebrated properties are always owned by the very rich, we have been told incessantly that
One of the fascinating things about working with the different types of clients we encounter as watershapers is that we can never really know what to expect. If my years of experience have taught me anything, it's that perception is often very different from reality. Instead, what I find is that the basic assumptions we might be inclined to make about different "categories" of clients are, often as not, completely confounded by the uniqueness of every situation. As a result, working effectively across a range of project types and client economic levels means being able to withhold judgment or at the very least avoid
One of the fascinating things about working with the different types of clients we encounter as watershapers is that we can never really know what to expect. If my years of experience have taught me anything, it's that perception is often very different from reality. Instead, what I find is that the basic assumptions we might be inclined to make about different "categories" of clients are, often as not, completely confounded by the uniqueness of every situation. As a result, working effectively across a range of project types and client economic levels means being able to withhold judgment or at the very least avoid
It's true for any subject that it's basically impossible to teach and learn about a topic unless there's a shared set of terms that everyone understands and can agree about what they mean. I've thought about that fact a lot in developing a course for university students about watershaping, or what I'm most often calling "water architecture" these days. With watershaping as a subject, that sounds simple enough. After all, we all know the meaning of "swimming pool," "fountain" and "pond." Or do we? I'm not so sure anymore. When I started breaking down our vocabulary for classroom use, I quickly recognized that the meanings of the words we use are anything but clear. Indeed, the more I dug into this seemingly simple phase of curriculum development, the murkier things became.The difficulty I ran into was this: Once I moved past the most rudimentary sets of terms and definitions and looked closely at the language we use to describe what we produce, it became painfully obvious to me that
It's true for any subject that it's basically impossible to teach and learn about a topic unless there's a shared set of terms that everyone understands and can agree about what they mean. I've thought about that fact a lot in developing a course for university students about watershaping, or what I'm most often calling "water architecture" these days. With watershaping as a subject, that sounds simple enough. After all, we all know the meaning of "swimming pool," "fountain" and "pond." Or do we? I'm not so sure anymore. When I started breaking down our vocabulary for classroom use, I quickly recognized that the meanings of the words we use are anything but clear. Indeed, the more I dug into this seemingly simple phase of curriculum development, the murkier things became.The difficulty I ran into was this: Once I moved past the most rudimentary sets of terms and definitions and looked closely at the language we use to describe what we produce, it became painfully obvious to me that
In the last several of these "Details," I've covered what happens in my projects before construction begins. Now we're ready to shift gears and look at what happens on site - the place where design and execution meet. Before we look at the way I build things, however, I want to take a hard look at common practices in the field. What I write here may seem harsh, but it's not intended that way: To establish a baseline for doing things in what I would term the right way, I need to point to practices in our industry - particularly the pool/spa sector - that
