fountain restoration
What does it mean to create something that qualifies as “great”? Is it originality and inventiveness, reliability and function, or the ability to withstand the test of time, or all of those? Here Jeff Freeman & Mark Holden dissect that question with a look at the rehabilitation of a truly iconic and complex fountain system at the Los Angeles Music Center.
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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
Starting in 1661, Louis XIV of France began a building project at his country estate in Versailles that would keep him busy throughout what remained of his reign. He held on all the way through until 1715, so he had a good, long time to browbeat large numbers of architects, designers and engineers into making the chateau a statement of power, wealth and majesty befitting a man who called himself Le Roi Soleil
