construction

Working the Views
From the start, this project was all about the view: The property sits above Lake Moumelle about 30 minutes outside Little Rock, Ark., in a small town called Roland. The lake serves as the primary reservoir for the state capital, so the waters are as serene and pristine as can be - no fishing, no boats, just thousands of acres of uninterrupted serenity. We at J. Brownlee Design (Nashville, Tenn.) had been asked to design the exteriors for a new home that was then under construction on the site. The homeowners, a couple with two children, and wanted a space that would be
Shaping Relationships
An Interview with  Paul Fischman by Andrew Kaner Through the years, we at Aquatic Consultants (Miami, Fla.) have formed bonds with several architects and landscape architects whose efforts we support with plans and details for the aquatic systems they're including in their projects. In that capacity, we have worked with Paul Fischman with some frequency. He's a partner at Choeff Levy Fischman, a Miami-based architecture firm, and in the past eight years we have seen our relationship grow to a point where we now consider
2020/2.1, February 5 — Bountiful Views, Professional Ties, Watershaping Wisdom and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS February 5, 2020 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE…
Team Building
This was a fun one - a project that was fully within our comfort zone but pushed us into new territory and gave us an opportunity to shine in a unique design context. We had worked with the property-management firm before, and they called us in to have a look at a large space behind a multi-story office building in Overland Park, Kans., where we were also to meet with the building's owner and some of the project's stakeholders. We had done well in our
2020/1.2, January 22 — Small Considerations, Corporate Teamwork, Helical Sweep and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS January 22, 2020 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE…
Technidea Updates Digital Leveling System
Technidea Corp. (Escondido, CA) manufactures the ZipLevel Pro-2000, a digital altimeter and leveling system for…
Making Edges Vanish
There are two common options when it's time to design the wall for a vanishing-edge swimming pool: cut it in or cut it away. With a cut-in approach, the top of the wall is cut down into the pool so that the water surface extends to the outside edge of the wall - effectively submerging it even when the water is not flowing over the edge. By contrast, a cut-away wall is one where the top of the wall angles down and away from the pool so that the water surface terminates at the inside edge of the wall. This results in the
Begin Again
This project started with an unexpected phone call. The clients, who live in Iowa much of the year but have a second home on the water's edge in Tampa Bay, had spotted a Wall Street Journal article in which a photograph of a swimming pool with a "floating" fire pit had been included. They loved the look and figured they could use it to dress up the poolscape that had come with their Florida retreat - if only they could find a local company to do it! Looking through the text, she spotted a reference to the fact that we at Ryan Hughes|Design|Build had designed and competed the project that
2020/1.1, January 8 — WaterShapes Update, Beyond Renovation, Vanishing-Edge Angles and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS January 8, 2020 www.watershapes.com WATERSHAPES WORLD…
A Desert Delight
There are three things I particularly like about this project: The first is that it was a referral through Skip Phillips, a co-founder of Genesis and one of my mentors as I've gained experience as a watershaper. He had worked on a project for the clients in Canada, and they asked if he knew of a good pool company in the Phoenix area. Backed up by our portfolio and reputation, Phillips's recommendation made us the right choice. The second is that the site had so