Travelogues & History
From time to time, I'll come across a fountain or waterfeature where jets or streams of water are used to suggest "motion" on the part of an accompanying fixed object. The objects in question are typically made of stone or metal - that is, materials embodying solidity, heft, timelessness and the utter absence of motion.
Many years ago, as one example, we published an article by frequent WaterShapes contributor Randy Beard, who wrote about a composition he worked on in which a platform of flowing water at the base of a sculpture of a breaching whale served to suggest it had recently broken the water's surface (click here). And one of my all-time favorites is the galloping-horse sculpture in Dallas, where the hooves of some in the line of dashing equine splendor raise splashes from a stream they're crossing (click here).
A half-dozen other examples of fountains of this type also come quickly to mind, but you get the idea. Done well, this is a cool, softening, naturalizing, communicative, engaging approach - and it gets even better when you're just walking along the street and happen to catch the offered illusion at a favorable angle.
That happened to me not long ago on a visit to San Diego, Calif., where I was walking along and minding my own business when I came across "Bow Wave," a fountain in which the business end of a big ship plies its way through water washing along its flanks. At a glance, it suggests the abundant thrust of a ship's passage as well as the massive resistance it had to overcome to make any headway.
From most angles, you can see that the ship is cut off a short distance back of the bow, but I first saw it in such a way that the leading edge of the sculpture was coming right at me (pretty much at the same angle seen in the image above). It's quite a nice illusion when it catches you off guard - and a slightly startling one at that.
Designed and sculpted by Malcolm Leland and installed in San Diego's Civic Center Plaza in 1972, the composition does a wonderful job in its suggestion of motion; in fact, it's among the best I've ever seen. Its success, alas, reminds me of the horror I felt when I saw that the fountain basin for "The Runner" had been insensitively redesigned in St. Louis: There, the entire, previously successful illusion of motion was cut off by thoughtless jet placement (click here); in San Diego, by contrast, Leland got it just right.
The sculptor was something of a local celebrity in San Diego, but I can find no other instances in which he put his elemental skill as a watershaper to use in any way. That's a pity, because he certainly knew how to put that medium to good use - simple, but effective.
San Diego's not a big town. The next time you're there for business or pleasure, wander by the Civic Center Plaza and be prepared for a nautical treat.
For me, one of the highlights of the 20th Anniversary Celebration for Genesis was the place most of us stayed: The Allegretto Vineyard Resort is a spectacular facility created as an extension of the imagination of the property's owner, Douglas Ayres. The hotel embodies an eclectic blend of design concepts, from dashes of feng shui to dollops of talk-to-the-land spiritualism mixed in with
The first of this pair of articles mentioned that Julia Morgan had completed the architecture program at Beaux-Arts in Paris in three years rather than the usual five, but I didn't mention all of the circumstances. One of the rules of that institution prohibited the instruction of students after their thirtieth birthdays, which seems a totally bizarre limitation to us now but apparently made sense to French academicians at the turn of the 20th Century. Given the delays in her gaining a position at the school, she'd entered the program with the clock ticking and really had no choice but to
When I wrote about Lawrence Halprin's Keller Fountain in Portland, Ore., in August 2012, I had meant to cover its Portland cousin, the Lovejoy Fountain, within a few months that have now turned into several years. Apologies for failing to double back sooner, because they really do fit together better than this span of time would suggest.
Lovejoy Plaza was the first completed installation in what is now known as the Portland Open Space Sequence, which includes four separate urban environments linked by promenades in a span covering eight blocks. Physically, Lovejoy Plaza is the second of the four spaces in the chain, which starts with the Source Fountain, moves past the Lovejoy Fountain, rolls through Pettygrove Park and ends up at the Keller Fountain.
Halprin was a pioneering advocate for this sequenced, themed approach to arranging urban spaces, and the fact that he became involved in Portland at a time of 1960s-style urban redevelopment gave him the opportunity to exercise his philosophy on a grand scale - and, more important, with a relatively clean slate.
The Lovejoy Fountain is a beautiful example of Halprin's aquatic work - varied elevations, expressive materials, dramatic contours, vigorous flows, wonderful sound. He's a master of mood management, in this case surrounding the fountain's rougher edges with plants and trees that soften its visual features and make the plaza more inviting. He's also a master of the art of engagement, providing all sorts of ways for passersby to get up close to the water and interact with it on multiple levels (this despite the fact that there are signs warning against coming in contact with it).
In this case as with several of his other designs, the Lovejoy Fountain is also a brilliant performance space - no surprise given Halprin's frequent collaborations with his wife, Anna, an accomplished performer who certainly encouraged him to look at public spaces as stages for dancers, backdrops for musicians and places for playful movement around the water. (One of the videos linked below put the fountain's artistic flexibility on brilliant display.)
The four spaces were designed between 1963 and 1970, with Lovejoy Plaza completed first, in 1966. Satoru Nishita served as partner-in-charge for the project after becoming a principal at Lawrence Halprin + Associates in 1964.
I like everything about this fountain, from its approachability to its reflection of nature and its debt to terrain I know well from my own time spent exploring the Columbia River Valley and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. It's manifestly a composed, artificial space, but it operates on a level where, like a great abstract painting, it gives observers the chance to run free with their own interpretations and responses.
If you can't tell by now, I'm a big fan of Mr. Halprin's work. The next time you're in the Great Northwest, spend an afternoon in downtown Portland and I think you'll see why.
To see an odd 360-degree video of the Lovejoy Fountain, click here and be sure to use the effect. It takes a while to get down to business, but it's worth the wait.
To see a video in which Lovejoy Fountain host an interactive art project, click here.
Through the years, I've had the privilege of working on a number of historic swimming pools. From grand old plunges at Yosemite National Park to the small patio pool at the Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills, Calif., I have often approached these treasured artifacts with two sets of eyes - first as an expert in forensics who figures out how the original design and construction came together, then as an engineer tasked with returning these precious vessels to good working order. Among all of the historic pools I've worked on, two of them fill me not only with pride, but also with the awesome sense that I'm collaborating with Julia Morgan, a woman for
The first time I visited my friends in Branson, Mo., it was a town in the midst of an identity crisis: It had built its brand as a place for mature folks to go hear popular music offered by performers cherished by their generation, from Andy Williams and Lawrence Welk to Roy Clark and Glen Campbell. The acts were still great, but they had largely become
His survey of St. Louis's fountains finally carried Jim McCloskey to Aloe Plaza and 'Meeting of the Waters.' a wonderful set of river-themed sculptures, well worth a visit. And let's not forget all of the controversy kicked up when the composition was first unveiled in 1940!
While in Venice, Italy, last summer, I came across a most unusual fountain in the Biennale Gardens near the city's historic Arsenale: It's a tall, slightly overgrown tribute to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian general, politician and nationalist who is counted among the founding fathers of the modern Italy.
I almost put the word fountain in quotation marks in the first sentence above, because the structure's water flows in an unusual way: While I'm reasonably certain the imposing tower of volcanic stone, granite boulders and bronze statuary once had internal plumbing and flowed with the greater elegance befitting such a tribute, it now flows through bands of black tubing interrupted in places by dribbling spouts.
The odd effect is that the monument seems to be watered by an ordinary drip-irrigation system that keeps its plants green and aerates the turtle-filled basin at its base.
I know that resources for restoration of even relatively intact artworks are scarce in Italy in general and especially in Venice, where life is a constant struggle to keep everything operational in the face of a combination of rising seawater and subsiding ground. But it's sad and a bit dispiriting that funds apparently aren't available for more than a stop-gap fix for a monument of this prominence and grandeur.
But no matter: The fix works, and I still enjoyed seeing the monument, which was completed between 1885 and 1887 by Augusto Benvenuti, a local artist and sculptor.
My guess is that it stands nearly 30 feet tall, with Garibaldi, flamboyantly attired, standing at its peak. Beneath him is a lion - the most accessible and impressive figure in the composition - as befits its being in Venice, where these beasts are iconic fixtures almost everywhere. Behind and below Garibaldi is a soldier attired in a uniform of the sort worn by Garibaldi's troops.
I haven't been able to determine if there are any plans to repair the fountain and restore it to a more elegant form, but I'll hold onto that hope. In the meantime, the monument is worth a visit - if only to marvel at the beautiful turtles!
One of the most fascinating college courses I ever took was on the history of science and technology. It focused entirely on Europe, which was limiting. But as I discovered almost immediately, there was so much cool stuff to cover that broadening the content would have turned an already brisk survey into no more than a shallow collection of dates and places.
The ten-week curriculum was divided into ten categories, and the one that has stuck with me most was a three-lecture series on water. It started with the Roman aqueducts and the rise of the concept of taming wild water for the benefit of urban populations, then moved on to the development of dams, reservoirs and organized irrigation systems. The third lecture was about bringing all of that engineering around to displays of power - which, for the most part, was about the use of water in fountains.
The third lecture's key example of applied technology had to do with the Machine de Marly, an attempt by 17th-century engineers to deliver enough water to run all of the fountains and waterfeatures installed at Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles outside Paris.
It turned out that the water program for the grounds far exceeded the capacity of local supplies to feed all of the jets, cascades, basins and waterways with functional head pressure. Stories have it that groundskeepers had to be constantly apprised of the king's location so that any vista he might observe would be fully operational while all other systems were turned off to produce the required pressure. Even at minimal levels, it was virtually impossible to keep everything flowing at once.
Enter Arnold de Ville, who adapted - on a grand scale - technology he'd seen at another French castle, working up a system of 14 water wheels, each 38 feet in diameter, to power 250 pumps that were to lift water more than 500 feet from the River Seine to an aqueduct purpose-built to speed water on its way to Versailles.
But the new availability of water didn't really help: Instead of using it to drive existing fountains at Versailles, the ingenious supply system was used largely to develop new gardens at the nearby Chateau de Marly, another royal estate where Louis XIV spent his time while the palace at Versailles was under construction. But even had the entire flow been delivered to Versailles, the sad fact is that it would still have been wholly inadequate to the purpose: Water rationing remained a constant limitation on the grandeur to which the king aspired.
The Machine de Marly is long gone and in fact lasted only 130 years after its debut in 1684 - a term of service in which the only constant was apparently the need to address breakdowns. Modern pumps finally replaced steam engines and assorted other approaches only in 1968.
As far as I know, the only visible signs of the original system are some reservoir walls along an old roadway between the river and the palace, so this is unique among subjects of these Travelogues in that I'll make no pitch for you to seek anything out. Versailles, of course, is worth a long day's visit, but there's no need to scour the woods looking for systems and structures of a long-gone hydrological wonder.
Whatever its shortcomings, the Machine de Marly was a singularly ambitious approach to what seemed at the time a solvable technological challenge. As our teacher expressed it to us back in 1975, the system's essential failure is less important than the fact that, in its time and place, it could be visualized and attempted - and raised the hydro-engineering bar to a level that hadn't been seen in Europe in more than 1,000 years.
There's also the fact that it allowed the architects at Versailles to carry on as though water supply was not going to be an issue. As a result, the watergardens and fountains are among the most unbridled expressions of centralized administrative power in world history. I'm no monarchist, but I do like the fact that watershapers were the ones who made so much grandeur possible.
I had traveled through Italy before, but I'd never been to Venice - and arrived there late in June 2017 with all sorts of expectations and suppositions about what I'd find, especially when it came to water. The city is a collection of islands in a marshy
