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Aqua Creek Products (Wye, MT) has launched the Mighty 400 and Mighty 600 ADA-compliant pool…
A pre-holiday visit with our grandchildren and their parents earlier this month gave me the opportunity to return to one of my favorite Seattle-area attractions: The Bellevue Botanical Garden. Covering 53 acres with long, easy trails and generous, well-tended plant displays, the facility also includes expressive watershapes in a variety of forms. I took an immediate
Aquatic Access (Louisville, KY) makes the IGAT-180, a lift that provides easy access to and…
The satisfaction that comes with completing beautiful, fully functional ponds is truly special – and when the water is intended for occupation by amazing fish, it gets even better. As was showcased in the first of the two parts of this video, we at Full Service Aquatics (Summit, N.J.) had been called in to convert a derelict swimming pool on the grounds of a major garden center into a pond the management could use to
Not long ago, I did a pair of columns on healing gardens and their benefits. If you’ll recall, I preached the importance of persuading hospitals in particular to include these spaces in their overall site plans as a means of providing garden environments for patients, patients’ families and hospital staff: These spaces reduce stress, help patients heal more quickly and give everyone who visits them a soothing sense of tranquility. I’ve attempted to the greatest extent possible to practice what I preached, and through the years I’ve installed numerous health-specific gardens at local assisted-living centers, Alzheimer’s care facilities and even at a center for emotionally-challenged children. But truth be told, I haven’t met with much success with our local hospitals, despite the fact that healing gardens have caught on with countless such facilities coast to coast. I don’t know quite why this is, but we
It may seem an odd source of inspiration, but I've always been interested in retaining walls. Even as a child, I'd see photographs of terraced hillsides rich with crops and wonder, "How did they do that?" I've since done my homework and have found historical evidence indicating that the skills needed to build these structures goes back many hundreds of years. I'm now applying those same skills today in devising soil-retaining systems for my clients. Whether it's farmers creating flat spaces on which to
Built to function and compete in an era when marketing matters for healthcare facilities, the McKay-Dee Hospital Center was designed to create a soothing, supportive, healing environment for patients, visitors and staff - so much so that the center looks more like a resort hotel than a medical institution. The architecture is open and soaring, offering sweeping views from interior spaces set up for comfort and restfulness. Designed by Jeff Stouffler of HKS Architects of Dallas, the structure is organized around a four-story atrium that runs the length of the building, offering clear lines of sight not only to distant mountain and valley views, but also to nearby landscapes graced with winding paths and beautiful watershapes. The opening of the 690,000-square-foot facility on March 25, 2002, was accompanied by great public fanfare. As people in the community have embraced and begun to seek care there, it's been a point of pride for us at Bratt Water Features to know that the beautiful curving lake that wraps around the exterior of the gleaming building is one of the things people see, enjoy and appreciate the most. BROAD SCOPE Our job was to build all of watershapes, including seven small fountains and the big lake system, based on designs prepared by Waterscape Consultants of Houston and by landscape architect James Burnett, also of Houston. As bidders on the installation contract in 1999, we had the advantage of being a local firm - but we also brought extensive experience with large-scale public waterfeatures to the table. And this project was big. As far as anyone on the design team knows, this is the largest waterfeature/fountain complex ever built in the state of Utah. We refer affectionately to the feature as "Bullwinkle" because, when seen from overhead, its oddly symmetrical free-form shape casts a silhouette resembling the cartoon moose's head and antlers. The antlers wrap around the footprint of the west end of the building, with the nose stretching away from hospital to create a broad lake with a towering geyser at the far end. The 175-foot-wide, 500-foot-long watershape features a 170-foot-long waterfall between the antlers and the crown of Bullwinkle's head that faces an outdoor pavilion/eating area served by an indoor café. The water falls four feet into a teardrop-shaped lower pond that serves as a catch basin - and which turned out to be critical to
Just as with species in the animal kingdom, architectural construction styles and techniques evolve over time, adapting to changes in the environment. In the case of fountains, these evolutionary transitions have been both complex and indicative of broader trends. Ancient wellsprings, for example, eventually gave way to decorative fountains with intricately carved stone sculptures. More recently, monolithic block, walled and stepped fountain forms have held sway. It's not much of a stretch to say that the latest significant "mutation" in this remarkable lineage is the dry-deck fountain: At a time when open space is at a premium and the public is being invited as never before to interact and participate in the architectural landscape, dry-deck fountains may well be the
