Page 207 – Water Shapes

Serendipity

Just recently, a business acquaintance suggested I would enjoy a meeting scheduled for a downtown Los Angeles hotel. I figured I'd go because the Museum of Contemporary Art is right down the street and I hadn't been there for a while. So off I went, braving rush-hour traffic, biting hard when I discovered it would cost me nearly $40 to park for the morning and doing my best to

Color Me Unimpressed

It's attention-getting, so it's easy to figure out why it's done. But in this case, my feeling is that just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. What I'm agitated about here is the peculiarly popular practice of coloring fountain water to commemorate special dates or events. You know what I mean: Think about all those fountains dyed red for Valentine's

Water has a will of its own, observes Scott Cohen, and takes advantage of whatever pathways it can find -- quite often to go where you don't want it to go. Unchecked, it can lead to staining that will seriously mar a watershape's good looks, not to mention a homeowner's good mood.

Water on the Move

In my work as a construction-defect expert witness, I see a certain problem in the design and construction of spillways all too frequently: When the system is initiated, the flow of water down the face of the dam wall will behave more or less as desired, holding to a narrow path into the pool or trough that awaits it. After a time, however, that water will begin to migrate, spreading out farther and farther beyond the desired pathway until the material - usually some sort of