fountain design
The shopping mall as we know it first emerged in the United States in the 1960s and since then has become a dominating retail presence on both the urban and suburban scenes. They started out in larger cities but soon were found just about everywhere - indoors or outdoors, small and large, visually appealing and, well, less visually appealing. Some are organized around upscale shopping and recreational activities, others around discount centers and manufacturers' outlets. There are many that are filled with mom-and-pop boutiques, while a few are integrated with amusement parks. Whatever seems likely to succeed, mall developers have certainly been willing to give it a whirl. At their core, however, every mall of any type has the primary mission of pulling people together so they can spend money on all kinds of merchandise; all the entertainment, dining and socializing are, in other words, secondary activities. In this sense, today's retail forums are a modern version of marketplace traditions that reach back to ancient times and almost every human society - with lots of modern conveniences added for good measure. Today's malls, in fact, are
The plaza island at Columbus Circle in New York is an example of urban and civic design at its best. Encircling the heart of this grand space is a subtle fountain system that has turned a busy traffic hub into a welcome gathering place for the city’s residents and visitors. Here, principal designer Claire Kahn Tuttle of WET Design in Sun Valley, Calif., describes the project and the philosophy the company brought to bear in bringing it to fruition. Tradition has it that, in measuring the distance a place is from New York, the geographical tape measure is placed at the center of Columbus Circle. This makes it easy to see this southwest corner of Manhattan’s Central Park (and the intersection of Broadway, 59th Street and Eighth Avenue) as the true heart of the city. A massive 70-foot obelisk topped by Gaetano Russo’s statue of Christopher Columbus has stood at the center of the bustling traffic circle since 1892, when it was installed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s arrival in the Americas. The circle itself was part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s
If ever there was an example of the power of simplicity, it's been the rise of what we call floating-granite-ball fountains. They've been around since the early 1990s and are now found in a range of commercial and even residential settings. I hadn't ever seen one when I joined HydroDramatics back in 1996, but I do know that soon after I started we began receiving a steady flow on inquiries about them - and it wasn't long before we received our first commission for a floating sphere for a major automobile manufacturer in Detroit. As has been the case every time a prospect has asked about one of these fountains since then, school administrators wanted
If ever there was an example of the power of simplicity, it's been the rise of what we call floating-granite-ball fountains. They've been around since the early 1990s and are now found in a range of commercial and even residential settings. I hadn't ever seen one when I joined HydroDramatics back in 1996, but I do know that soon after I started we began receiving a steady flow on inquiries about them - and it wasn't long before we received our first commission for a floating sphere for a major automobile manufacturer in Detroit. As has been the case every time a prospect has asked about one of these fountains since then, school administrators wanted
The latest generation of Las Vegas hotels and casinos offers an amazing showcase for pools, fountains and watershapes of every shape and size. In fact, for many such properties, the presence of these increasingly imaginative watershapes is crucial to defining their appeal for huge numbers of guests and visitors. As these properties and their watershapes have become more elaborate and unconventional, they've presented designers, engineers and builders with greater and greater technical challenges - many of them carried in the plain fact that water can inflict a great deal of damage on these facilities if it is not properly contained and controlled. In our end of the watershaping trades, the visual and sensory arms race has challenged the waterproofing industry to step up to the plate and manage the integrity of every nook and cranny of every vessel, be it wide or narrow, curved or straight, below-grade or
If you've been reading WaterShapes for any length of time, you've probably noticed that we take more than a bit of pride in presenting the arts and crafts of watershaping in the broadest possible ways. From modest and subtle to bold and elaborate, the work
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
I've been playing with clay for a long time - ever since 1968, when I took my first ceramics class in high school. Clay has captured my imagination mainly with its flexibility: I can carve it, build with it and even color it. For years, I've sculpted pieces of tile out of stoneware and porcelain clay. The individual pieces are then combined to create mosaic compositions, which, among other things, means that I'm able to create works of art that can go just about anywhere and are especially at home in and around water. Now, more than 30 years into working with this wonderful medium as a potter, then as an art student in the United States and Italy and especially in
