concrete
For the past year and more, we’ve worked our way step by step through the many processes involved in designing and installing quality residential watershapes, starting from the first contact with a prospective client and working our way through, in the last two months, to the application of well-selected interior finishes. A concern I’ve always had with this step-wise approach is that it makes too many of these operations seem as though they happen in isolation and that decisions about design and materials and finishing touches are made as
In the parlance of those who know best, it's time to discuss "mud" - the concrete material out of which most watershape shells are made. Mud enters the scene after the steel, plumbing, electrical conduits and forms have been placed and, in some jurisdictions, all work to that point has passed careful inspection. The concrete itself can take any of four forms: concrete block or poured-in-place concrete (neither of which is used very often), or gunite or shotcrete (far more commonly used). In my three decades of building watershapes, I've worked with all of these materials. If a very specific set of circumstances calls for the use of
In the parlance of those who know best, it's time to discuss "mud" - the concrete material out of which most watershape shells are made. Mud enters the scene after the steel, plumbing, electrical conduits and forms have been placed and, in some jurisdictions, all work to that point has passed careful inspection. The concrete itself can take any of four forms: concrete block or poured-in-place concrete (neither of which is used very often), or gunite or shotcrete (far more commonly used). In my three decades of building watershapes, I've worked with all of these materials. If a very specific set of circumstances calls for the use of
Thomas Alva Edison once said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." That may be his most famous utterance - and for good reason: A good idea is important in just about any creative endeavor, but without dogged pursuit of appropriate
Thomas Alva Edison once said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." That may be his most famous utterance - and for good reason: A good idea is important in just about any creative endeavor, but without dogged pursuit of appropriate
Sometimes the simple things make all the difference between success and failure. For all of the high-flown conceptualizing that drives much of what so many watershapers do these days, there's no escaping the need for attention to
My clients' eyes light up when they first discuss color. They describe intense images of saturated reds, violets, and blues. The more color we can pack in, the better. No one yet has asked me for a garden awash in neutral grays. But what do they really want? As a landshaper, am I delivering the best service by designing a landscape overflowing with pure, vivid colors? As the hired expert, how am I to produce a landscape design that evokes the feeling they really want? That end result - the feeling, or emotional response, that the client gets from the garden - will not necessarily be achieved by placing bright colors everywhere. What we want is a garden that sings, not screams, with color. Of course to design this kind of garden, we designers must understand color ourselves. There is, unfortunately, an abundance of misunderstanding and misinformation on the subject. Let's aim at a more thoughtful understanding of color by approaching it in a logical, sequential manner. Let's explore how color really works, and how to design with color to form compositions that produce the feeling your clients
Understanding the client is frequently the most important factor in creating a successful design. In the case of the project highlighted here, for example, it was a given that the clients were highly educated and knowledgeable with respect to design, style and materials: He's a top-flight graphic designer with an amazing grasp of color, line, architectural details, presentation materials and techniques; she's a degreed interior designer with a wonderful artistic flair. They're also two of my best friends: He and I taught together at UCLA and have known each other for more years than I care to admit. They've known about the focus of my business for years and said they hadn't wanted to call me because the project
Next to the water itself, concrete is the most important and widespread of materials used in watershaping. Not only is it instrumental in creating the structures that contain water as well as the substructures that support them, concrete is also the stuff of which faux-rock panels, pre-cast or poured-in-place coping, pavers, all manner of stamped or textured decks and poured-in-place or block walls are made. Despite its omnipresence, however, concrete remains one of the most misunderstood of all watershaping materials in this sense: Because it is so durable in basic structural applications, there's a tendency to
It's a setting of searing beauty and now features a home that is unquestionably a work of art. Designed by renowned architect Helena Arahuete of Lautner & Associates (Hollywood, Calif.), the structure sits on a privately owned, 2,000-foot-tall mountain known as Twin Sisters Peak - just part of an 1,800-acre estate in Solano County, Calif., that offers clear vistas of the Pacific Ocean, Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Sacramento Valley, Napa Valley and the Sierra Madre Mountains as you turn around the compass. In the great tradition of "organic architects" from Frank Lloyd Wright through to Arahuete's mentor and long-time collaborator, the late John Lautner, the home takes full advantage of its setting, crowning the mountaintop with a glass-and-concrete hexagon that at once beautifies and harmonizes with the landscape. So fascinating is this structure and so prominent is its location that, during construction and ever since, private
