Book Notes
As I’ve mentioned before in this space, my education in landscape architecture pulled up lame when it came to instruction in art and art history. That shortfall has bothered me greatly as my career has progressed, but the silver lining is that I’ve been motivated to seek out sources I can use to
Although we might not commonly think of watershaping and exterior design in this way, a great many of the details we shape are designed to fool the eye or somehow create illusions. Consider the pools that are made to appear so natural that they don’t seem to have been man-made — or vanishing edges that conjure the impression that
As I’ve mentioned before in this space, my education in landscape architecture pulled up lame when it came to instruction in art and art history. That shortfall has bothered me greatly as my career has progressed, but the silver lining is that I’ve been motivated to seek out sources I can use to teach myself what I think I need to know. My latest find in this campaign is a wonderful book designed specifically to prompt personal voyages of exploration: It’s called The Daily Book of Art: 365 Readings That Teach, Inspire and Entertain (Walter Foster Publishing, 2009) and delivers on its title’s promise by
How do you define artistry? That’s a highly subjective question, of course, but I’ve always thought of it as a completed work that radiates impressions of insight, effort, skill and mastery – even in seemingly ordinary applications. Breaking it down further, materials are my personal passion – how they are selected and, far more important, how they are used. Indeed, while the presence of wonderful materials alone can make their impression no matter how banal a design, when the person wielding those wonderful materials has the
It’s unlikely that anyone back in 1992 would have imagined that the daughter of fashion designer Calvin Klein would change the way we think of swimming pools. That might be a slight exaggeration, but to me there’s no question that Pools by Kelly Klein, first published by Rizzoli 15 years ago and rereleased late in 2007, was unique at that time in treating pool design as
Given the fact that swimming pools and most other watershapes are placed in the ground, I've long been of the opinion that it's incumbent upon all of us who design and build them to have a basic understanding of soils science and geology. As has been stated in this magazine and elsewhere more times than I can count, the nature of
2010/12.1, December 1 — Durable Plaster, Leaking Fountain, Kelly Klein’s Pools and more