engineering
Landscaping has to be something special to harmonize with the amazing natural surroundings of places such as we encountered with the Colony at White Pine Canyon: Set on 4,000 acres near the famed ski slopes at Park City, Utah, the resort/homestead project was to have watershapes second to none when it came to their natural beauty. Indeed, water was central to the entire plan. We at Land Expressions of Mead, Wash., were engaged by the developer, Iron Mountain Associates of Salt Lake City, to execute an 830-foot stream, a 34-foot cascading waterfall and a sprawling quarter-million-gallon pond. All of this came along with an array of natural plantings, pathways, a 500,000-gallon water tank surmounted by a five-acre meadow, and a guard shack made from rocks, sod and a fallen tree. Projects of this sort don't come along very often - and when they do, they call for creativity, preparation and planning on a grand scale. In this case it, also meant working at (literally) breathtaking altitudes and in a small window of opportunity between snow seasons - all while infusing the work with intricate detail. Here's a look at
Throughout recorded history, people have tried to control the elements in every which way they can. We plant trees to block the wind, build levees to hold back rising river water and dikes to hold back the seas. We build skyscrapers that defy gravity, winds and earthquakes. For all of this ingenuity, however, we sometimes don't do a very good job. When our efforts to control the elements fail on a large scale, we witness catastrophes that
Back in June 2000, WaterShapes publisher Jim McCloskey and I traveled to Montecito, Calif., to have a look at a project being installed by our friend Mark Holden. Just the drive up the long private road from sea level to
The way we see it, the most successful watershapes take two participants: a visionary designer who can express the clients' desires, and an accomplished builder who can turn that creative vision into reality. Sometimes, the designer and builder are one and the same person or organization. In many other instances, however, it is the collaboration of two professionals from opposite ends of a project that makes the difference between a watershape that is simply a watershape - and a watershape that is truly a
Skimmers are found in just about every type of watershape imaginable, including gunite, vinyl-lined, fiberglass and aboveground pools as well as in-ground and portable spas - not to mention ponds, stream and fountains. In each case, specific skimmers have been designed to serve the individual applications. For purposes of this discussion, let's keep things simple by sticking to skimmers' most familiar application - in gunite swimming pools. A KEY ROLE The main function of a pool's skimmer is removal of debris from the surface of the water. To do so, the skimmer is connected to the suction-side plumbing of the pool's pump and draws water across a weir (or a float) as a result of the vacuum created by the pump. The weir (or float) is buoyant by nature and allows only a
A watershape doesn't need to be immense to be either beautiful or monumental. Nor does it need to be outsized to serve its community as a gathering place or point of pride. Those are a couple of the lessons we learned in shaping the York Street Millennium Fountain in the heart of one of the highest profile tourist areas of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Using an inventive approach that balanced the needs of the neighborhood, a range of national and local government officials and the general citizenry's desire to celebrate the new millennium, the project also embraced the city's own rich history. The new fountain sits at a significant crossroads of pedestrian traffic between the Byward Market and the government district in downtown Ottawa. Indeed, the traffic island surrounding the fountain stands just blocks from Parliament Hill, the seat of Canada's national government, and was intended from the start to serve as a focal point and gathering place. Although small and comparatively simple, the project was complicated by the need to satisfy both local and national officials, which meant we had to incorporate
The watergardening business has exploded in North America in the past few years - so much so that it's easily the fastest-growing segment of the watershaping industry. This wave of interest in naturalistic watershapes means that hundreds of people new to the craft of pond and stream building are now out there, working on all sorts of residential and even a few commercial projects. Some of these are landscape contractors working with water in a significant way for the very first time. Others are pool contractors who've
It was one of those projects that demonstrate just how beautiful and exciting swimming pools and spas can be. The clients started by asking for something unique that would make creative use of lighting, hydraulics and sound - something that would maximize and extend the modern styling of their home while making the most of spectacular views available along the shore at Westhampton Beach, N.Y. Their confidence in our capabilities and creativity set the tone for the entire project and let us step well beyond the ordinary in our thought processes. This trust was
People don't usually have trouble with boundaries and will honor requests to "Keep Out," for example, or leave certain doors to "Employees Only." But there are also cases where we generally take issue with limitations on behavior whether stated or implied, and I can think of no better instance in which this takes place than with water in public spaces. Despite designers' best efforts over the years to make it clear where bathers are welcome and where they are not, the public has steadily defied boundaries by trespassing into waters that were never directly designed for human interaction. In fact, you might say that formal, decorative fountains are a forbidden fruit from which many of us have taken the occasional bite. During the past two decades, watershape designers have looked very specifically at the irresistible urge we have to touch water in an effort to shape all-new boundaries between public nuisance and design nuance. Along the way, we've learned which elements offer a deliberate, positive signal - a real "permission to play" - and are now wielding this power of interactivity to create and define a broad range of
William Rowley & Scott Mackey It's one of those places you really have to see to believe. Part indoor waterpark and part competition facility, the Sierra Vista Aquatic Center is owned by the town of Sierra Vista, Ariz., a desert community of approximately 35,000 retirees and military families located near the sprawling Fort Huachuca army base. That's about 50 miles south of Tucson - and about as remote as a town can get. Known locally as "The Cove," the aquatic facility represents the town's commitment to its citizens' quality of life and a nod to the potential recreational water has to transform a community. From start to finish, the project took about four years and cost about $6.7 million, all paid for by the city. Designed by Tucson architect Scott Rumel, the basic facility was built by Lloyd Construction under the management of construction supervisor Leon Davis. Tucson pool builder Mark Ragel of Patio Pools set up the various watershapes, while our firm, Rowley International Inc. of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., took care of the aquatic design and engineering. The facility opened in
