engineering
This is one of those cases where, from a design perspective, I said just about everything I wanted to say about rain-curtain effects in the video linked below. They look great, they sound even better and my clients love them. So what else is there to consider? Well,
As I noted a couple weeks back, my to-do list of household projects has long included installation of a small fountain. In the place I had always intended to put it, I figured that the watershape would be visible from the redwood deck where we do most of our warm-weather entertaining; from the stone deck where we
It was a great project: The client called us in to look at a sloping backyard for which his one and only wish was an environment that would be "organic and pre-existing" - that is, a composition that looked as though it had been there forever, long before the adjacent home entered the picture. That sort of look is our stock in trade at Outdoor Republic, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based firm that specializes in the use of artificial rock. As is often the case, we became involved after the homeowner had
When agitated or flowing water moves through the air, it loses carbon dioxide. That's particularly significant in systems with fountain jets, waterfalls or vanishing edges, observes Kim Skinner, with the loss affecting pH in ways that must be dealt with to avoid big problems.
Indoor pools are wonderful as both design challenges and family recreation centers. But as Paolo Benedetti discusses here, they'll stand the test of time only if you take care of moving the moisture they generate away from the indoor space -- no shortcuts allowed!
Once U.S. designers and builders "discovered" vanishing edges - probably at some point in the 1980s, although the look emerged long before then with some forward-thinking architects and watershapers - we've never let this highly visual design detail go. I use these edge effects in my designs all the time, and setting them up in the best way possible has
Atlantic Water Gardens (Mantua, OH) has introduced two new aeration kits for watergardens up to…
With the huge pond and a moat that wraps itself around the house, it's a variety of watershaping you'd ordinarily associate with a medieval French castle. But actually, it's part of a contemporary estate in Brentwood, Calif., in the backyard of a couple with an amazing desire for an aquatic kingdom they could call their own. The couple had recently moved from the eastern United States and decided to take the fullest possible advantage of
The fun thing about working on spec houses is that, every once in a while, you run into a client who truly wants to blow the doors off - in the best way possible, of course. That was certainly true here: The home is right on the water on one of the islands in Biscayne Bay where Miami's elite prefer to live, and the eventual asking price for the property was in the $26 million range, give or take. It's an area where few
