construction
It only stands to reason that you can't have a watershape without the water, but I sometimes wonder just how much watershapers really know about
When people talk about how much they love living in the desert, I've come to believe that what they really mean is that they love living in an oasis looking out onto the desert. That's profoundly ironic, but my clients in St. George, Utah, have all chosen for one reason or another to move to an extraordinarily arid place and seem universally to crave the presence of water in their immediate surroundings. This is indeed one of the most important things they're looking for in homes in our developments. It's one of the reasons why
To those who see art as frivolous and ultimately unnecessary and expendable, we offer as a counterweight the following from Austrian poet, Ernst Fisher: "Art is a driving force in bringing humankind to greater quality of life, and it is therefore an absolute cultural necessity." For the artist, tremendous responsibility comes with that necessity. Indeed, those who expose others to art bear a burden in shaping entire cultures as people around them come to accept their artistic output as essential threads in the social fabric. Think of Brunelleschi in Renaissance Florence, for example, or Gaudi in modern Barcelona. When we as watershape or landscape designers seek to expose others to our works of art, we accept a profound moral responsibility whether we work in the public or the private domain. At its core, our responsibility is to seek and communicate truth. As we see it, one and all who fall under the broad umbrella of the watershaping arts should be
As much I enjoy seeing my own projects come to fruition, there's something wonderful in seeing watershapers I know achieve great results in their work. I admire and encourage the effort, especially when the outstanding outcomes are the result of a professional's concentrated efforts to improve his or her own skills. This is one of the reasons I teach: I take great satisfaction in sharing my techniques, sensibilities and the conviction that what I do is special, a true form of art.Sometimes I speak with former
The Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The site to which we were summoned in January 2004 - a 220-acre estate set amidst its rolling hills - confirmed that opinion in every possible way by offering incredible views of nearby valleys, forests, farmland and mountains. We'd been called to take over a grand-scale swimming-pool project, one as outsized as the property with respect to scope and complexity - and one that required constant, detailed interaction with
I'm steadily reminded of one key point: No matter how talented any one of us might be, the work ultimately is not about us. For intensely creative people equipped with the necessary measures of self-confidence and ego, that point can be tough to accept and absorb, but it's true: For all our skills, we nonetheless work with our clients' visions, and the reality is that creating sympathetic designs for them takes time, patience and lots of effort. As a result, I'm passionate about uncovering what my clients are truly after in their garden and watershape designs. It's an investment of time and energy at the onset of the relationship that always
At a time when scores of American cities are still looking for ways to revive the faded glory of their urban cores, possible approaches are as visionary (and numerous) as can be. The process has resulted in new parks, major redevelopment, architectural restorations and a long list of other solutions - including the unique watershape commissioned by the city of White Plains, N.Y. A town with 54,000 full-time residents whose population swells to more than 200,000 during the day when office workers, shoppers and visitors come calling, White Plains made the decision to invest $4.5 million of public and private grant money in resurrecting a small downtown park. Appropriately named Renaissance Plaza, the park surrounds a state-of-the-art musical fountain unveiled in October 2003 for the specific purpose of luring people back to the downtown area - and it has worked. In fact, the plaza has become such a hub of activity that nearly 1,700 units of new residential housing are now under construction in its downtown neighborhood. URBAN OBJECTIVE First settled by British colonists who bought it from the Mohican tribe in 1683, this historically rich city located 25 miles north of Manhattan has truly been reborn, and it's with no small measure of
It may have been in the heart of the depression, but 1932 was a good year for American swimmers: The Olympic Games in Los Angeles saw Clarence "Buster" Crabbe win gold in the 400-meter freestyle in the then-world-record time of 4:48.2 and Helene Madison win gold medals in both the 100- and 400-meter freestyle events. U.S. swimmers claimed nine medals in all, in many cases besting swimmers from the powerful and heavily favored Japanese team. The competition was held in an eight lane, 50-meter pool positioned quite literally in the shadow of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Just as the names and records of those swimmers have faded across 70-plus years, so too had the swimming pool and its companion recreation pool. Although they had remained in near-continuous use for generations, the old vessels were supplanted when a modern swimming pool complex opened on the nearby campus of the University of Southern California in anticipation of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad. Early in 2003, we at Rowley International of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., were asked to renovate the old facility's two swimming pools. The City of Los Angeles, along with support from the Amateur Athletic Federation (AAF), set a goal that didn't involve
Have you ever wondered why watershapes are at the heart of so many venerable courtyards and plazas? In a modern context, we might start answering that question by thinking about the natural human fascination and connection with water and then conclude that, like us, those who built the public spaces of ancient Mesopotamia or Athens or Rome simply liked being in the presence of water for emotional and spiritual reasons. But the truth behind the prominent role of water in these spaces isn't as romantic as all that. Indeed, there's
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
