Comfort, Fun and Beauty
Eric Herman
It’s tough to keep the Big Picture in mind when the day-to-day grind seems relentless. Even so, it’s important to take a step back from time to time and remind yourself of exactly what it is that you’re doing. And in this industry, that equates to nothing less than delivering to your customers a trio of amazing benefits – namely comfort, fun and beauty.
Think about it for a moment: Watershapes are among a very small handful of products that are able to provide for all three sides of this triangle of value. Homes can do it, cars can do it and vacations can do it, but the effects are only temporary. The simple truth is, there’s nothing quite like a well designed, engineered and installed watershape when it comes to elevating the sheer enjoyment of modern life.
There are infinite ways to slice and dice those benefits, and in this issue I think we offer some very interesting portions:
[ ] Comfort: On an individual level, we all know that jumping into a cool pool when it’s hot or that standing by a fountain’s spray in the parched desert air feels really good. What you may not be aware of, however, is that watershapes have played this role in human societies going back hundreds, even thousands of years.
In this issue, landscape architect Mark Holden covers this historic sweep, tracing today’s functional and design concepts to their roots in some of the world’s most famous watershapes (click here). One of the key points he makes is that among the many virtues of these watery monuments, many served the basic function of cooling the air and raising the humidity in public spaces in the ancient desert cities of Islam, where modern principles of hydraulics first emerged centuries ago.
[ ] Fun: Of course we all know that swimming and playing in water are fun, but a point lost on some in the trade in our day-to-day work is that they can be fun for us, too, as well as for our clients. In telling the story of the installation of his own backyard pool (click here), watershaper Skip Phillips discusses his own rediscovery of the pleasures of pool ownership.
To be sure, the joy of executing the perfect cannonball may be the farthest thing from your mind as you wrangle with schedules and accommodate change orders, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. After all, it’s the joy and sheer fun that goes with swimming and water play that’s probably a big part of why your clients called on you in the first place.
[ ] Beauty: Never before has watershaping been elevated to an art form the way it has been these days. In this issue, supplier Rick Bibbero discusses the aesthetic value offered by highly mineralized rock material (clicke here), while columnist and watershaper Brian Van Bower takes us on a walking tour of the vast range of exciting materials available for use in making your projects ever more beautiful (click here).
These discussions offer a palette of possibilities, a full range of ways you can vest your work with eye-catching details and riveting designs. And the best thing is that a watershape doesn’t need to be fully lined in gold leaf to achieve this beauty: Limited use in brilliant details is all it takes to make the right impression.
It’s truly an amazing set of benefits you bring to your clients. Certainly, the coming summer weeks may make you hot and tired, but you should absolutely take some consolation – no matter how hot the day – that what you’re doing genuinely improves people’s lives and lifestyles.