book review
The numbers are eye-popping: Just about one percent of all the water on Planet Earth exists as fresh water suitable for human consumption. And depending on where you live in the United States, anywhere from a quarter to almost half of that precious resource
Concrete is an utterly amazing material, but it's so widely used — so pervasive in our world — that it's easy for the average person to take it for granted and barely give it a second thought. As watershapers, of course, we don't have the luxury of
It might sound a bit strange to put it this way, but when it comes to design work, one of the most useful things you can do is to think about how you think about design. If you’re like me and have been working as a watershape designer for more years than you care to count, much of what you do is now second nature. But if you think back to the way it was when you first started – and if you’re anything like me – little or none of what you did felt natural or easy. In my case, I had to process every step methodically, sometimes awkwardly and even painfully on occasion. That’s why I wish, back in those early days, that I’d
So much has been written and said about our current economic situation that it can get pretty depressing. One thing I hear and read over and over is that “Many people are just stuck, waiting and hoping for things to change.” I can’t help noticing that, for lots of people in government and major industries as well as in small businesses and sole proprietorships, this approach means doing the exact same things they were doing when their days were fat with opportunities. Personally, I think that’s crazy! I believe if I want my situation to change, good times or bad, I must change myself from within and can’t afford to wait for external forces to push me toward prosperity – especially not these days, when nobody really knows what’s
Concrete is an utterly amazing material, but it’s so widely used – so pervasive in our world – that it’s easy for the average person to take it for granted and barely give it a second thought. As watershapers, of course, we don’t have the luxury of underestimating concrete: With the sole exception of water, it’s far and away the most essential of all the materials we use across a huge range of applications. We simply could not do what we do without it. But how often do we deploy concrete in purely aesthetic ways? Some of us use artificial rock or specialized decking treatments, but isn’t it mostly true that we build our structures from concrete and then systematically cover it up with plaster, stone, tile or some other surfacing material? It didn’t take long for me to start
It’s a bit hard for me to believe it, but it’s now been fully 11 years since I attended my first Genesis 3 design school. One of the events I remember most clearly from that first session was (among many others) David Tisherman laying out a bunch of books and recommending that we should immediately obtain and read all of them. Always looking for a firm foothold, I asked him which one I should read first, and, without hesitation, he pointed to Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. I didn’t act on his advice right away, but I eventually acquired a copy and started reading – and it took me nearly
On several occasions through the past few years, I’ve been called on to design several projects that were both extremely small and extremely detailed. I’ve found that working in these intimate spaces is a tremendous challenge, with every single detail taking on tremendous importance and even something as innocuous as
Those of you who've followed this column for any length of time know that it's all about my hunt for resources that will help me become better at what I do. As I see it, my job here is to share what I discover in the hope that my own information-seeking journey
