engineering
Three words come to mind when I consider what's been happening with the Main Fountain Garden at Longwood Gardens for the last two-and-a-half years: ambitious, audacious and amazing. The people behind the project, from Longwood's management team to all of the outside players who signed on to get the work done, were supremely ambitious in deciding to reconstruct a historic national treasure - first commissioned in 1931 - and bring it abruptly up to 21st-century standards for performance, automation and serviceability. They were audacious to the extent that they decided that all of this should happen in plain view, with no visual obstructions to hide what was going on from the public at large - no construction pen, no yellow tape, no barriers of any kind to keep the observers who crowd the fountain's famed Conservatory Terrace from seeing exactly what was happening with their beloved water display. But so amazing! Although it had been in decline
As purveyors of fountains and other forms of decorative or recreational water, watershapers are faced these days by an immediate challenge: What we do is generally classified as "unsustainable" by an environmentally conscious public because they erroneously assume poor performance when it comes to the way we approach water consumption, use of space and energy efficiency. On the surface, these are serious knocks on
I'd hazard the guess that most experienced pool designers and builders have run into this scenario: The clients want a pool, and they also want a spa - but not just any spa will do. Through the years, these clients have been in the attached spas of friends' inground concrete pools, but this is not what they want. That's because they've also experienced portable spas and prefer their performance: superior jet action, diverse seating arrays and options, more features and
Sometimes, things come together in just the right way. I'd been called in to a multimillion-dollar property with a large, three-year-old house on it, right next to the Chattahoochee River on the northwestern fringe of Atlanta. There was an existing pool, but the homeowners wanted something new - a composition that befitted the home's elegance and said more about
During last summer's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the swimming pools attracted an amazing amount of attention. Unfortunately, it was only partly because of the outstanding in-pool performances offered up by swimmers, water-polo teams and divers - a feast of excellence that will
Pebble Technology (Scottsdale, AZ) has added 100-percent copper scuppers to its Fire+Water Elements line. Engineered…
As watershapers, we're comfortable using our chosen medium as a place-maker, an entertainer and a resource for recreation. In doing so, we take advantage of the fact that water is a unique, extremely versatile substance that can be manipulated in innumerable ways. We also accommodate the thought that, supreme among design media, water has a pronounced and often profound effect on people who
