architecture
When we get involved in backyard projects, it's rare these days that we don't have a fairly high level of creative control: We're the ones who figure out where to place the pool, what shape it should have, how it should be finished and what should surround it with respect to the hardscape and landscaping and even the furnishings. That's why it's a bit funny that this is the second in a pair of projects we've recently published through WaterShapes in which many of the fundamental shots were called by others - in this case by a talented home-construction firm that brought us in after the footprint for the pool and spa had been
The masters of 20th-century residential architecture have a profound influence on design to this day. From Charles and Henry Greene through to Frank Lloyd Wright and on to John Lautner and many others, these giants of design continue to push modern interpreters on to new levels of excellence in concept, form and execution. Among all of the spectacular houses these architects built, few speak to us with greater energy than Wright's Fallingwater, a spectacular home he designed in 1935 in Mill Run, Pa. Cantilevered over a stream flowing to a dramatic waterfall, the project has inspired envy among generations of architects and homeowners who'd love to capture even a portion of its special magic in another setting. This is a tale about one such attempt, a house built about 20 years ago with
‘Not long ago, I was asked by a reporter from The New York Times to define the main difference between swimming pools now compared to what they were 20 years ago. As we talked,’ wrote David Tisherman in his Details column for the December 2007 edition of WaterShapes, ‘it became clear that she was mostly thinking about technological breakthroughs in pumps and chemical treatments and the like. ‘I confirmed for her that, yes, those products had come a long way. But I wouldn’t let her stop there, suggesting that there was much more than
As a landscape architect, I generally approach projects with a balanced view of a space's potential. I weigh all of the possible elements in the prospective design, envisioning pools, spas, decking, lighting, shade structures and plantings as well as the flow from the inside of the home out into the backyard and the uses to which the homeowner intends to put the space. Every once in a while, however, the unique features of
I recently enjoyed my umpteenth visit to the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens. It's an amazing estate in the city of San Marino, Calif., a well-heeled enclave near Pasadena, and was established by Henry Huntington, nephew and heir to transcontinental-railroad magnate Collis Huntington. This is a place that shows you what a serious fortune could buy in the early years of the 20th Century.I like the library and appreciate the art collection, but the reason
Established as a wealthy man's weekend playground, this scenic, seven-acre slice of paradise on the Atlantic side of Islamorada in the Florida Keys is routinely used as the setting for fashion photography, commercials and films because of the archetypal way it expresses the "Keys Lifestyle." I was brought on board by Steve Siskind, the architect who designed the house. (He's done some spectacular residences through the years, but interestingly, he's never lived in a house and instead
Please don't hold it against me: I was an English Literature major in college.
My specialty was the old stuff - Shakespeare's plays, the comedies of the Restoration period, poets from John Milton to Alexander Pope, and the early novelists, especially Jane Austen. It was mostly a pursuit of things written before about 1820 and kept me more than busy.
About eight months after I graduated in 1977, I took off and traveled the world for the best part of a year, spending May and June of 1978 in England and devotedly seeking out places where my favorite subjects of study had lived and worked and found inspiration. I went to the places where the great theaters had been and tramped along rivers and city streets listening for echoes and seeing if there was anything left that would attach me to the life experiences of my literary heroes.
It was all fairly thin until I reached the city of Bath, where Jane Austen had centered so many scenes in her great novels. Back in 1978, the place hadn't changed all that much since she'd lived there; it still embodied a mood and architectural style that easily carried me back 200 years to her time.
For all of her virtues, however, Miss Austen wasn't hugely impressed by Bath or at all into the one feature of the city that most thoroughly captured my imagination while I was there - that is, the natural watershapes that gave the town its name and had defined its function at least since the Romans reached England nearly 2,000 years earlier.
I'm mindful of the fact that I took this trip well before watershaping came to define my own function and life. Even then, however, I was blown away by the thought that the Romans had settled in this place around 70 A.D. and had converted the site's warm springs into a system of pools to serve as an early spa.
Not much is visible from those times; in fact, the baths were basically forgotten and buried after the Romans left a couple centuries later and were only rediscovered in Shakespeare's time. But seeing the still-visible parts of the Roman baths in person - and absorbing all I could about their inner workings from a memorable museum exhibit - I felt as though I was witnessing history in the grandest and most personal way possible.
When you take that history and surround it with graceful Georgian architecture, the package Bath offers its visitors is quite complete and unique. And so tasteful, I might add, that I have to think that even a Roman would have been pleased to see their baths set amid such a splendid and sociably neoclassical context.
No, you can't "take the waters" the way they did when Jane Austen was around, but it's well worth a visit: For inspiration, the baths of Bath can't be beat.
