WaterShapes World Blog
Few who shape the water will ever make as profound an aquatic mark on the world as did landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. He’s long been a favorite of mine, and we’ve called attention to his work and influence on more than a few occasions in the pages of WaterShapes and on WaterShapes.com. Along with Thomas Church and very few others, he defined the way we all
I’ve been around watershapes on a professional basis since 1986, and I can recall more than a few times when something has crossed my desk that made me cringe. Often it was studies released by the National Association of Realtors about what adding a pool does to a home’s value. On too many occasions it was news about
Back in the early days of WaterShapes, I recall a long breakfast conversation with David Tisherman in which we discussed the importance of travel as part of a complete design education. It was the summer of 1999, and I was on the hunt for artwork to go along with an article Mark Holden was preparing on the history of watershape design: David was known as someone who had traveled extensively and, more to the immediate point, was an avid taker of photographs of superior quality. He’d brought several sleeves filled with slides (remember them?) along to breakfast, and as we talked and I reviewed the photos, I was endlessly impressed by how meticulously he’d recorded so many places and details. I’ve always been a traveler, too, but I never much cared for
The ingenuity of the folks at the National Swimming Pool Foundation makes me smile. If you’ll recall, I wrote several months ago about Tom Lachocki’s election-season declaration that it was time to donate to something, anything other than candidates for office. His suggestion was to divert political contributions toward the funding of swim lessons for children – which seemed, amid the fall’s welter of campaign ads, a much more productive way to
In the past year, I’ve written Travelogues for WaterShapes EXTRA about the reflecting pool on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C., and the fountain at Point State Park in Pittsburgh. In researching these watershapes and looking for suitable video links after selecting them for coverage and starting to write about them, I learned that both had been closed for renovation as I was pulling things together. Apologies for the timing – although I’m reasonably confident
I was wandering around the web the other day when I came across this headline: “City Breaks Ground On First New City Pool In 50+ Years.” Ironically, the town getting the new pool isn’t some backwater where there’s been no growth or progress in the last half-century: It’s Fort Worth, Texas
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for more than 50 years, was once a decent athlete and have always been a sports fan. I’m avid about local traditions and culture and have peeked in on at least parts of broadcasts of Tournament of Roses Parades on New Year’s Day since the late 1950s. On January 1, 2013, however, I did something I never thought I’d do: At the invitation of
As 2012 comes to a close, I’ve slooked back on the year just past and I’m amazed by everything that’s happened with the WaterShapes franchise. The newsletter has gotten better with each succeeding edition, and the watershapes.com web site has grown literally every day since
Back in the day when WaterShapes was primarily a magazine and only marginally an Internet entity, I had a group of fine people around me. In fact, at the time we shifted from mostly print to all-digital after releasing our July 2011 edition, the same team had put together every edition of the magazine for more than a dozen years. It was a merry crew, and one of my most pleasant tasks each year was
The past couple weeks have seen an unusual number of good-news items cross my desk. Let’s start with the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals’ announcement of the formation of World of Recreational Water, a new foundation that will promote the sustainable use of recreational water worldwide. Back when Eric Herman and I spent many long hours
