building practices

Just the Opposite

'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,' wrote Brian Van Bower in opening his Aqua Culture column for April 2002, 'because so many of the pools I see run like junk and look like junk.' 'The environment out there is so unfortunate that

Stone Stepping

Stairs, to borrow an immortal phrase from Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect.” In fact, if my observations through the years tell me anything, the stairs set in far too many landscapes are strictly utilitarian objects – no more than a means of getting from one level of a space to another. The only thought that seems to go into some of them has to do with avoiding trip hazards, which is important but hardly the most aesthetically oriented of approaches to take. In my experience, when stairs are considered in deliberate and creative ways, they can become