Gliding Step by Step

When I prepare my Travelogues, I always spend some time, usually midway through the process, looking at what’s available on the Internet to support the basic observations I’m getting ready to offer. Often, for example, I’ll confirm information I already have about designers or engineers or installers (and their clients), touching all the bases to get the details right.

As important, I’m on the lookout for videos that give a sense of the scope of these spaces as well as a record of the way the water moves and sounds: I want you to have an approximation of the experience I had when I saw a featured fountain, pool or waterfeature in person.

In the vast majority of cases, I end up finding YouTube videos that are either way too long or far too short or uninformative to share. Quite often, I’ll stumble upon videographers who get sidetracked by the need to police their kids; other times, the videos are just so painfully choppy and amateurish that I don’t want to waste your time by asking you to link to them.

In the case of this Travelogue, I had settled on letting you know how much I’d enjoyed seeing the escalator fountain in Chicago’s Water Tower Place a couple years back. It’s one of WET Design’s subtlest and most effective installations – a delight to the senses in an entirely easy, understated way.

In looking for images and videos, I came across the one linked below. It goes way beyond the usual video’s scope in capturing the wonder and coolness of the fountain. In fact, it left me at something of a loss for words: This guy is pumped up about this place in ways I don’t think I ever would be, so I’ve decided to step aside and let him speak directly to you, just this once, for the two-minute duration of his video.

I can’t help admiring his kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm – and I’m assuming that the young woman who joins him in the video is someone he knows rather than a random bystander. Click here to see him – and the fountain – in their full-fledged splendor.