outdoor kitchen
This was a fun one - a project that was fully within our comfort zone but pushed us into new territory and gave us an opportunity to shine in a unique design context. We had worked with the property-management firm before, and they called us in to have a look at a large space behind a multi-story office building in Overland Park, Kans., where we were also to meet with the building's owner and some of the project's stakeholders. We had done well in our
As is true of many designers, I carry a large number of unusual ideas in the back of my mind, waiting for the right site, the right client and the right project to pull them out and put them to use. Some of these ideas are innovative or even wild and most of them are unconventional - otherwise, they would have found quicker paths to my drawing board. In the project covered in this article, I was lucky enough to break out two of these special ideas - one an unusual transition from the home's upper level down to the poolscape, the other in the form of
My recent article in WaterShapes left readers in some suspense. As reported last time (click here), we were most of the way through the design process and were actually getting ready to start important work on site when the homeowners sprung something new on us. They'd just returned from a trip to Europe, and they'd been so inspired by what they'd seen that they wondered if we could inject a sense of the "Old World" into the project. The goal had previously been about creating a naturalistic setting in which wilderness seemed intent on reclaiming the space. Their fresh desire was to make explicit the notion that a
It's been my good fortune through the years to have worked with some wonderful clients who've inspired me to take the extra step, think in different ways and do everything possible to make them happy. This family was on that level: They love entertaining friends and relations, yet more than anything, the four of them enjoy spending time together - a throwback to the "Leave It to Beaver" spirit of the 1950s and '60s. At every turn, they were easygoing and patient in ways that made
