THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS July 10, 2019 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE/October 2008 Resounding Renewal Set in an urban district in Los Angeles, the Echo Park Deep Pool needed help. Working with the project architect,William N. Rowleyengineered and oversaw much of the restoration and left local residents with a facility that enables […]
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The Necessity of Restraint
By David Tisherman
‘Everywhere you turn these days,’ wrote David Tisherman to start his Details column in August 2005, ‘you see watershapers tackling projects that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.’
‘With this broadening list of possibilities, however, . . . [t]he industry’s like a teenager with a fresh driver’s license: just because he or she knows how doesn’t necessarily mean that
Restoring a Classic
By Jason Fragomeni
It seems odd to say it, but I first became involved with this project largely because I happen to live on the same street as my clients.
We all live in a beautiful, historic neighborhood in Mountain Lake, N.J., a small town that lays claim to having the largest collection of authentic Craftsman-style homes of any municipality in the United States. It’s the kind of place where residents take immense pride in the architectural splendors you see almost everywhere you turn.
Most of these homes were designed and built by the legendary architect and builder
Falling Arches
By Rick Pendleton
For me, hitting the high notes in watershaping and landscape design is a product of careful observation, boundless imagination and detailed visualization. These factors drive the design process, after which I transition into the more practical phases of the project with reliable engineering and quality construction.
The early, creative phases can definitely be tricky, because they require many of my clients to take great leaps of faith, especially when what they’re after is a highly customized environment – something truly unique.
In those cases, we know that we at Artisan Home Resorts (San Jose, Calif.) are asking clients to visualize something nobody’s ever seen before: No matter how well we represent our ideas on paper or on a computer screen, the outcome will, to a certain degree, remain an abstraction until the everything is finished and working.
When everything finally comes together (as we believe it did in the project illustrated in this feature), a vision is realized and the payoff can be extremely rewarding, both for the clients and for those of us who worked hard to see the process through. Here as in few other projects we’ve done, however, even we weren’t precisely sure how
Falling Arches
By Rick Pendleton
For me, hitting the high notes in watershaping and landscape design is a product of careful observation, boundless imagination and detailed visualization. These factors drive the design process, after which I transition into the more practical phases of the project with reliable engineering and quality construction.
The early, creative phases can definitely be tricky, because they require many of my clients to take great leaps of faith, especially when what they’re after is a highly customized environment – something truly unique.
In those cases, we know that we at Artisan Home Resorts (San Jose, Calif.) are asking clients to visualize something nobody’s ever seen before: No matter how well we represent our ideas on paper or on a computer screen, the outcome will, to a certain degree, remain an abstraction until the everything is finished and working.
When everything finally comes together (as we believe it did in the project illustrated in this feature), a vision is realized and the payoff can be extremely rewarding, both for the clients and for those of us who worked hard to see the process through. Here as in few other projects we’ve done, however, even we weren’t precisely sure how
A Master at Work
By Raymond Jungles
I first became an admirer of Roberto Burle Marx while I was a student in landscape architecture at the University of Florida: His remarkable work, which combined a special brand of modernism with the lush potential of Brazilian settings, was incredibly powerful and the major formative influence on my own professional career.
I’d learned how to draw in school and had acquired the technical skills it took to be a landscape architect, but it was seeing how Burle Marx approached his landscapes and paintings – not to mention the way he lived his life – that gave me the spark I needed to define my own approach.
My personal relationship with him began soon after I graduated in 1981. I’d read an article in the Miami Herald about Burle Marx turning 70 and began writing to him in hopes he’d invite me to visit his home in Brazil. A couple of months later, I received a call from my friend Lester Pancoast, a well-known Miami architect. Burle Marx was in town and was staying as his houseguest, Pancoast explained, suggesting that since Burle Marx had a free evening I might want to take him to dinner.
My future wife and I spent a nice evening with Burle Marx, who was reserved but very polite and seemed all the while to be sizing us up. After dinner, we went to Pancoast’s home, where Burle Marx showed us
A Master at Work
By Raymond Jungles
I first became an admirer of Roberto Burle Marx while I was a student in landscape architecture at the University of Florida: His remarkable work, which combined a special brand of modernism with the lush potential of Brazilian settings, was incredibly powerful and the major formative influence on my own professional career.
I’d learned how to draw in school and had acquired the technical skills it took to be a landscape architect, but it was seeing how Burle Marx approached his landscapes and paintings – not to mention the way he lived his life – that gave me the spark I needed to define my own approach.
My personal relationship with him began soon after I graduated in 1981. I’d read an article in the Miami Herald about Burle Marx turning 70 and began writing to him in hopes he’d invite me to visit his home in Brazil. A couple of months later, I received a call from my friend Lester Pancoast, a well-known Miami architect. Burle Marx was in town and was staying as his houseguest, Pancoast explained, suggesting that since Burle Marx had a free evening I might want to take him to dinner.
My future wife and I spent a nice evening with Burle Marx, who was reserved but very polite and seemed all the while to be sizing us up. After dinner, we went to Pancoast’s home, where Burle Marx showed us
Southern Accents
By Robert Vaughn
Specializing in naturalistic watershapes obviously requires an appreciation of nature, says Atlanta-based pond/stream specialist Robert Vaughn, but doing a good job of emulating what happens in and around natural bodies of water also calls for a refined set of design and installation skills – especially when the goal is to create watershapes that appear right at home amid rolling topographies and densely wooded landscapes.
The Atlanta area is a great place to be a watershaper these days. The natural landscape is beautiful with its undulating terrain and dense tree canopy, and there are plenty of affluent, upscale neighborhoods in which skills may be applied in support of clients who have the wherewithal to demand something special.
That combination of attributes adds up to great opportunities for companies like mine – Earthwerx of Carterville, Ga. – that focus on crafting nature-inspired paradises in substantial backyards. Indeed, this is a market in which prospective clients are passionate about enjoying their homes and their surroundings instead of engaging in the hassles and perceived risks of travel.
In addition, where property values and home equities in other markets have taken a hit in the past year, the
Integrated View
By Melanie Mackenzie
From my first visit, I knew I’d be spending a lot of time here developing the watershapes and landscapes on this amazing site.
Set on a bluff in Del Mar, Calif., the whole property slopes down from the street level to the back edge of the property. Beyond was an open space offering uninterrupted views of a river estuary, native coastal scrub studded with rare, indigenous, protected Torrey Pines and the Del Mar shoreline’s pounding surf. There were also the spectacularly patterned cliffs at Torrey Pines State Park – a vista and set of colors that ultimately determined material choices for this project.
It helped that I was completely at ease with
Integrated View
By Melanie Mackenzie
From my first visit, I knew I’d be spending a lot of time here developing the watershapes and landscapes on this amazing site.
Set on a bluff in Del Mar, Calif., the whole property slopes down from the street level to the back edge of the property. Beyond was an open space offering uninterrupted views of a river estuary, native coastal scrub studded with rare, indigenous, protected Torrey Pines and the Del Mar shoreline’s pounding surf. There were also the spectacularly patterned cliffs at Torrey Pines State Park – a vista and set of colors that ultimately determined material choices for this project.
It helped that I was completely at ease with