Aqua Culture
Working outside your home region is exciting stuff. It opens you to a broader and often more dynamic arena for doing business and lets you work with new sets of clients and their architects, landscape architects and designers. The projects are typically interesting and often unusual, and you can make a good dollar while reaping the personal benefits that come with travel to faraway places. On the one hand, being in demand for long-distance projects represents a measure of success in your business and shows the high degree of confidence others are willing to place in your skills. The simple fact that clients are willing to
One of the keys to designing effective spaces for human occupation is to create opportunities for movement from one place to another. This component of mobility adds functionality and utility to just about all spaces while keeping them vital and interesting. In watershape design, we have several options when it comes to introducing mobility to our work, including pathways and bridges that lead to
What makes for a great natural-style watershape? That's a huge question - one which a great many people have devoted their careers to exploring and for which almost every one of us will have a slightly different answer. As you will see here, my own response to the question starts with even more questions about the site, my clients and the surrounding structures and vegetation - questions I ask myself as I approach each individual design assignment and decide how far
Is it honest to say that too few of the swimming pools you find in America's backyards are what one could call well built - and that even fewer of them are well designed? I think so, because so many of the pools I see run like junk and look like junk, and it's way too easy to find installations that lack any apparent relationship to their settings, their homes' architecture, the landscaping or any recognized
One of my least favorite activities is testifying as an expert witness in legal disputes over watershaping projects gone awry. As a rule, I try to stay out of courtrooms for any reason, but from time to time, I reluctantly agree to offer my opinion as a witness if I think I can help generate a fair outcome. Despite my best intentions, however, I seldom see it as time well spent. The process is often stressful, and I know deep down, regardless of who's right and who's wrong, that lawsuits are
At nearly five months and counting, it's clear that many of us are still trying to sort out, understand and learn to live with the events of September 11, 2001 - and I suspect that, on some levels, we will be doing so for months or even years to come. Over and over again, we've been told how our lives are now different. Although it'll still take us a while to find out what "different" really means, we know already that we've lost a certain amount of innocence. We've also lost a certain naiveté about the way things are in the wide world and are now reevaluating many things, from big important issues such as airport security to more modest concerns such as
Whenever I'd call my mother on the phone when I was a kid, she'd start the conversation by asking me, "Are you smiling?" Back then, I never gave her greeting too much thought because that's what young people do: They ignore their parents' wisdom until they realize at some point just how smart the old folks could be. As I've grown older and gained experience in business and life in general, it has occurred to me that my mom's question is important and even a bit profound. At first blush, this notion of smiling on the phone is sort of silly. After all, no one sees your face when you're on the phone, so who cares about the expression on your face? But the truth is, this question of whether or not you're smiling on the phone has everything to do with
Lately I've been finding myself in what seems like a fairly unique position: On the one hand, I work as a design consultant for architects and as a designer for high-end customers; on the other, I work as a builder executing the designs that customers and their architects choose. In this dual capacity, I've been able to gather a tremendous amount of input from construction clients and transfer it in one form or another as a consultant. I also have had the opportunity of seeing how decisions made in the design process play out during the construction process. Seeing both sides has led me to certain conclusions, chief among them
I've always been excited by innovation. I place creativity high on my list of aspirations and priorities in my own business, and I think my life gets most interesting when I'm involved with people who are similarly attuned to this desire to do and try new and interesting things. Fortunately, I've had the benefit of associating with highly innovative people through the years who've shared the creative process with me, taught me a lot and made the ride extremely enjoyable - and fruitful. These experiences have filled me with a desire to be out front myself with innovative and creative ideas. I often wonder where we would all be if some of us weren't willing to
To the Good Life!