construction
Lots of clients come to the design process for their watershapes with certain preconceptions. Sometimes, they even have full-fledged and dearly held visions of what they want. Every once in a while, that can be a good thing; other times, however, not so much. But what I try to do regardless, each and every time, is
The trouble with conventional approaches is that they can take the creativity out of watershape designs. Almost always, for example, spas are placed directly adjacent to or within the walls of a swimming pool. For a couple generations now, this has led designers to specify open spillways to move water from the spa into the pool, thereby creating a single body of water so far as
When New York's Long Island comes up in conversation, most people think about the Hamptons, exclusive summer resorts, incredible estates and beaches by the mile. But that image has a flip side: For many years, in fact, Wyandanch, a hamlet within the town of Babylon, N.Y., has been a community that has had very little go its way, with poverty-stricken streets, gang activity and not much going on that would make its citizens hopeful about
When vinyl-liner pools first appeared more than half a century ago, they were offered as "standard" pools for middle-class consumers - plain, simple and relatively inexpensive compared to their concrete cousins. Back in the 1950s and '60s, these vinyl-liner packages had squared-off shapes, but as time passed and consumers demanded greater variety, models emerged with oval forms or Grecian-style ends; before long, there were kidney-shaped packages and even some
These days, it seems like just about every homeowner wants to get something special with their pools and spas. More often than not, that means some form of water in transit, whether it's a cool spillway, a vanishing edge, a bubbler on a thermal shelf - or, as in the case highlighted here, some sort of jet that will
The first time I saw it, the water of the Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain had been turned off for servicing. In that inert condition and with tiny figures creeping over its greenish surface, it looked to me as though a squat flying saucer had dropped in to slurp up water from Lake
Not long ago, I received a call from a young electronics entrepreneur who asked me to come and meet with him about the possibility of adding a swimming pool or spa to his multi-million-dollar hilltop property. The home had been built in the early 1960s, he told me, and he'd just completed a major remodeling project. He also indicated that he knew I was expensive, but that he'd already met with a number of other contractors and wanted to
