flexibility
Of all the promotional tools Dave Garton has deployed to support his watershaping business through the years, nothing has been more effective than his business cards. Why so? As as he reports here, it's because there's more to them than the usual bits of contact information.
When we in the design community follow through with our belief that successful urban spaces must work as gathering spots and community resources for recreation, social interaction and relaxation, all sorts of good things start happening in these environments: Those who initiated the ideas are satisfied with the results; those who designed and built them are empowered to participate in effective, rewarding team processes; and those who use the spaces come back again and again, maintaining a high level of
S.R. Smith (Canby, OR) manufactures SwimWall Systems to bring lane-length flexibility to larger commercial and…
It's easy to back up an assertion that a good fountain is the key to making a public space work. A monumental statue is great, for instance, but when you add water even in the quiescent form of a reflecting pool, the visitor's experience of the installation is enhanced in many ways. And while big, open plazas may serve as ready-made gathering places, if you add even a small fountain, the overall space will be defined by its presence and visitors will inevitably be drawn to it as a focal point. Public fountains take many forms, but whatever the specifics, their
This is the story of a project where I'm still not sure which was tested more - my creativity or my patience. It was one of the first design tasks I tackled after moving to Katy, Texas, in 2009. In retrospect, it may not have been the ideal time to relocate: The full force of the Great Recession wasn't clear at that point; I had a job but no direct way to bank on the good reputation I'd built where
Versa-Lok (Oakdale, MN) manufactures Harmony segmental retaining-wall blocks as an economical solution in creating random-pattern…
It’s no secret that swimming pools have come a long way in recent years and are now graced with all sorts of features, functions and materials that, once rare or non-existent, have now become common and (in some cases) familiar. For all of that innovation, however, there really hasn’t been what one might call a re-imagining of the product or any fundamental reassessment of its nature. In fact, as we and certainly some prospective clients see it, there are problems with pools as they’re traditionally designed and built. For one thing, bathers with physical limitations have difficulty getting in and out of the typical pool. For another, pools take up a good bit of physical space, which is increasingly an issue as
