construction
As watershape designs become ever more creative and adventurous, there's an increased need to help clients and other project participants visualize our plans. Indeed, presentation is a topic of great importance these days for designers from both the pool/spa industry and the landscape trades, so much so that it's become a fixture on educational calendars and one of the cornerstones of the Genesis 3 curriculum. What has everyone excited about upgrading the way they present their ideas is that there are various good ways to get the job done. To be sure, having the ability to draw is a tremendous asset - some would say an absolute necessity - but fortunately for those who are
The late, great architect John Lautner is believed to have been among the first to conceive of and build a vanishing-edge swimming pool as a means of more directly tying views across the water into distant vistas. It's a landmark of modern aquatic design that has been emulated thousands of times in the 45 years since he designed "Silvertop" in Los Angeles, and it's wonderful to know that his spirit of innovation survives to this day in the company he started. The home and watershapes seen here are the work of Lautner's protégé and longtime collaborator, Helena Arahuete of John Lautner Associates (Hollywood, Calif.), who composed it all as a spectacular exploration of organic design principles and the use of water to express and magnify details of a setting while leading the
The late, great architect John Lautner is believed to have been among the first to conceive of and build a vanishing-edge swimming pool as a means of more directly tying views across the water into distant vistas. It's a landmark of modern aquatic design that has been emulated thousands of times in the 45 years since he designed "Silvertop" in Los Angeles, and it's wonderful to know that his spirit of innovation survives to this day in the company he started. The home and watershapes seen here are the work of Lautner's protégé and longtime collaborator, Helena Arahuete of John Lautner Associates (Hollywood, Calif.), who composed it all as a spectacular exploration of organic design principles and the use of water to express and magnify details of a setting while leading the
When I first walked the four acres of wooded ravines of what would later be christened "The Garden of Wind and Pine" at the heart of the Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Ark., I was both delighted and daunted by the experience. The delight came in the site's sublime natural beauty, which reminded me of tromping through the woods as a child - an activity I enjoy to this day. As for my sense of unease, I don't know which was more significant: the expansiveness of the dry drainage ravines that were to be converted to ever-varying cascades and streams, or the omnipresence of ticks and poison ivy. When I made my first visit in the fall of 1999, the site was part of an undeveloped 210-acre woodland parcel on the shore of Lake Hamilton given to the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville by Verna Garvan. She had long seen the peninsula as the ideal setting for a botanical garden and had spent two decades developing her vision, planting camellias and azaleas and a rose garden and commissioning a pavilion by the architect Fay Jones and his partner, Maurice Jennings. I had worked in Fayetteville before, crafting a
June 6, 1944, was a cold, dark, cloudy day along the northern coast of France. When the Higgins boats carrying allied troops slapped their gangways into the cold sea 60 years ago this month and released their human cargo onto the beach, withering machine gun fire greeted the soldiers from German bunkers high above the beach. Before the day was over, 6,603 Americans had lost their lives in what became known as D-Day - the start of the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. When planning started for a National D-Day Memorial to be built in Bedford, Va., the project's
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
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
Truly a large-scale project full of unique technical challenges in an unusual and important civic setting, the renovation of the watershapes at Jambalaya Park in Gonzalez, La., is easily the most unusual project our firm has ever tackled. The park covers seven beautifully wooded acres in an older section of town that's mostly residential but sits directly behind City Hall and several other smaller civic buildings. It takes its name from the fact that the city is known as the world's "Jambalaya Capital" and annually hosts a week-long festival celebrating the Cajun stew that has become a star in the
It's one of the most horrific things that can happen to anyone who enters a pool or a spa: One moment you're having fun or relaxing, and in a terrible instant you're caught in a devastatingly painful and potentially fatal situation. Most people who become entrapped by pool, spa or wading-pool plumbing do survive, but all too often they suffer life-altering injuries. As with any aquatic safety issue, we all agree these incidents should be prevented, and a great many talented people from government, trade associations, research institutions, equipment manufacturers and consumer-safety groups have invested a tremendous amount of time in examining suction entrapment. For all of that effort, however, seeing our way to
Now we come to the finishing touches - little details that make a big difference in the ultimate appearance of the renovated pool we've been watching develop here for the past several months. Through those many months, we've taken a pool that's more than 70 years old, rerouted all of its plumbing through cores cut in the old shell, added a circular spa in the shallow end, raised the floor in the deep end, reshaped the steps, added lights in a new, pool-long bench, installed all-new equipment and laid down gorgeous glass tile throughout - all without disturbing the beautiful limestone decking that surrounded the pool. As the project came to a close, we turned to a final
