Travelogues & History
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Pittsburgh through the years. My mother was born up the Alleghany River in Brady’s Bend, my father closer by in the suburb of Swissvale; both grew up in the city and attended the University of Pittsburgh, where they met and fell in love. My sister now works at their
Let’s journey to the Lone Star State once again to see an appropriately grand-scale waterfeature – and another exuberant collaboration between renowned architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, who also devised the Fort Worth Water Gardens highlighted in the January 25, 2012 edition of this newsletter. This time, we’ll stop downstate in Houston to see the monumental Williams Waterwall in
Just about everyone is familiar with Hoover Dam on some level, but in considering it from the perspective of watershapers whose working lives depend on containing and controlling water with concrete structures, I’ve always thought this engineering marvel is worthy of
Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of the United States in more ways than one. Indeed, the author of the Declaration of Independence was also an architectural scholar and dedicated adherent of the philosophy and style of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an architect of the Italian Renaissance who
While sorting through family photos for a personal project a few weeks back, I came across a computer folder filled with images I’d taken the last time I visited my sister in Washington, D.C. It had been a blustery, damp day and none of the shots I took was particularly good, but they brought back fond memories of
I’ve spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., through the years. I was born there in the 1950s, my favorite aunt lived there in the ’60s, one of my brothers lived there through part of the ’70s, business took me to the area frequently in the ’80s and ’90s, and one of my sisters
So far in my Travelogues, I have always reported on watershapes I’ve seen with my own eyes – but every rule needs its exceptions, and this is one of those cases. Many years ago, I became aware of Santiago Calatrava’s extraordinary bridges – structures so far removed from historical precedent and any sense of the ordinary that
Back in 1979, when I first started in magazine publishing and was toiling away as a humble editorial assistant rewriting lots of press releases, the thought of having my own office seemed out of reach. But I was just
In the first entry in this series of articles, we opened a discussion of the hurdles watershapers encounter when attempting to integrate pools or spas with architectural styles that historically never had swimming pools
I’m fairly jaded when it comes to observing watershapes: I’ve seen a lot of them, know how they work and tend to focus on weird details that go beyond what’s perceived by the typical observer. There is, however, a fountain that makes me feel giddy and even
