construction
It's one of the most famous buildings in the world, but few people know that Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater in a matter of hours. In 1935, when Wright first received the commission to design and build a vacation home for Pittsburgh retail tycoon Edgar J. Kaufman and his family in Mill Run, Pa., he didn't get to the project right away. After several months of preliminary discussions and delays, Kaufman decided to force the issue, telephoning the architect and saying that he was going to visit Wright's studio to see what had been done. It was at that point Wright decided he'd better design the house. He had a weekend. The construction process was no more direct, but it took longer. Work began in 1936 and was completed by 1939 in a series of costly fits and starts. The project was originally set to cost in the neighborhood of $40,000, but the final tally rose to nearly ten times that amount - not inconsiderable in post-Depression America. The result of the dramatic (and, at times, traumatic) process of design and construction is nothing less than one of the greatest achievements in American architecture, a work so compelling that it never stops
From the start, this project was meant to be something truly special - a monument symbolizing the ambition of an entire community as well as a fun gathering place for citizens of Cathedral City, Calif., a growing community located in the desert near Palm Springs. "The Fountain of Life," as the project is titled, features a central structure of three highly decorated stone bowls set atop columns rising into the desert sky. Water tumbles, sprays and cascades from these bowls and other jets on the center structure, spilling onto a soft surface surrounding the fountain. All around this vertical structure are sculpted animal figures - a whimsical counterbalance that lends a light touch to the composition and opens the whole setting to children at play. I've been building stone fountains for 18 years, and I've never come across anything even close to this project with respect to either size or sheer creativity. Making it all happen took an unusually high degree of collaboration on the part of the city, the artist, the architects and a variety of
From the start, this project was meant to be something truly special - a monument symbolizing the ambition of an entire community as well as a fun gathering place for citizens of Cathedral City, Calif., a growing community located in the desert near Palm Springs. "The Fountain of Life," as the project is titled, features a central structure of three highly decorated stone bowls set atop columns rising into the desert sky. Water tumbles, sprays and cascades from these bowls and other jets on the center structure, spilling onto a soft surface surrounding the fountain. All around this vertical structure are sculpted animal figures - a whimsical counterbalance that lends a light touch to the composition and opens the whole setting to children at play. I've been building stone fountains for 18 years, and I've never come across anything even close to this project with respect to either size or sheer creativity. Making it all happen took an unusually high degree of collaboration on the part of the city, the artist, the architects and a variety of
This project is all about making connections - connections between the inside of a home and the outdoors; between surrounding wide-open spaces and an intimate backyard; between the colors of the hillsides and the materials used in crafting the watershape; between the clients' desire for recreation and their passion for beauty; and between the beauty of nature and the modern, sculptural lines of the design. If you've followed my "Details" column in WaterShapes in recent months, you've seen many of the components that have been incorporated into this particular
Whether you choose to replicate old stone structures or borrow ideas and transplant them into contemporary designs, there is certainly a treasure trove of design concepts to be found in the masterworks of those who've gone before us. Indeed, stone has been the raw material of choice for many of the world's greatest architects, landscapers and watershapers, each of whom has relied on stone and its timelessness in fashioning works of beauty. In the first two articles in this series, we toured
I'm amazed at how few watershapers keep the size and shape of the average body in mind or consider the science of ergonomics when they design projects for their clients. Just think about how much more we can do to increase their comfort and enjoyment by doing so, particularly when it comes to custom concrete spas. Take a look at the average spa attached to the typical pool: On a great many of them, you'll see a cantilevered deck around the edges. From the perspective of
It all begins with the water. The first thing anyone approaching the world of ponds needs to understand is that life-supporting water is quite unlike the sterile water found in swimming pools or spas or many other watershapes. A second and related point is that clear water is not necessarily healthy water when it comes to the needs of the inhabitants of the pond. For a pond to be healthy, its water must meet the chemical requirements of plants and fish by having an abundance of some things (such as nutrients) and a near-total lack of other things (such as pollutants). Sanitized water may be beautifully clear, but the fact that sterile systems are designed to knock out nutrients and work chemically because they are "polluted" with chlorine and algaecides makes them completely unsuitable as life-supporting ecosystems. The goal with ponds is to work with nature in balancing the life-sustaining features of the water - and to set things up in such a way that maintaining that balance will be something your clients can do long after you've moved along to another project. To do so, you need to embrace the water-quality basics outlined in the last issue of
An important part of creating beautiful commercial watershapes is designing systems that actually work, effectively and enduringly, within the requirements and constraints of their given settings. This has become a real issue in the fountain business, where new demand is popping up at locations as diverse as resorts, malls, hotels, art pavilions, office buildings, convention centers, museums and even restaurants - and a few too many good-looking designs have been pulled out, significantly downsized or turned into planters because they just haven't performed as needed or
Everyone is concerned these days about electricity, gasoline and natural gas and all other forms of energy. What is amazing is that, despite this surge in interest, very few people have considered ways in which swimming pools can be built to reduce the energy required to heat them - and by substantial amounts. This dearth of energy consciousness has nothing to do with the manufacturers of heating equipment. It's fair to say that most heater manufacturers - whether they pursue combustion heating with fossil fuel, compression heating with heat pumps or passive heating with radiant solar, absorbent solar panels or solar covers - all have optimized their own products and made them remarkably energy-efficient. The same is true of recirculation systems: Pumps of all kinds are optimized to very high efficiencies, and the pool and spa industry has made positive improvements in acknowledging the necessities of hydraulic efficiency (although it's fair to say we
Interactive watershapes are all about invitations to play. For designers, interactive watershapes provide invitations to use water and the control of flowing water to create unique play environments. For children, teenagers, parents and other adults, they are invitations to play with one another in a safe and exciting aquatic playground. It's a form of invitation that's rapidly gaining popularity in an era when playtime for both children and adults has become excessively passive and dominated by surfing the net, playing computer games or staying glued to
