pond Archives - Page 21 of 27

The gardens of James van Sweden have influenced an entire generation of landscape architects and designers, and his firm – Oehme, van Sweden – has designed scores of renowned public and private spaces in the United States and around the world. Here, he profiles the recently completed Chicago Botanic Garden and its Great Basin, describing what it’s like to approach, bid and execute design projects at the very highest level.

The New American Garden

The Chicago Botanic Garden is located, oddly enough, a good 40 miles from that city in the suburb of Glencoe, Ill. And although it is specifically named for the Midwest’s greatest city and might seem a municipal endeavor, it is actually maintained by private donations and serves to display the entire region’s rich flora and scenic beauty. The garden is organized around a large body of water known as the Great Basin, which was created some 60 years ago by dredging the area and diverting the Skokie River to create a series of islands and lagoons. The largest island, known as Evening Island, was the initial focus of our work in redesigning the space. My firm, Oehme, van Sweden and Associates of Washington, D.C., became involved in the project

As ponds and lakes become more common amenities for large estates and commercial properties, says George Forni, increasing numbers of clients are demanding water quality more akin to that of swimming pools than to natural bodies of water – and very often, he adds, they want cleanliness and clarity to be attained without any chemicals. Here, he shows how this can be accomplished, in this case in a system of large ponds on a 100-acre estate.

A Crystal-Clear Mandate

Our projects generally take two forms. On the one hand, we're called upon to "heal" ailing bodies of water that have been set up with inadequate or improperly functioning circulation and filtration systems. Although other people's mistakes mean good business for us, I won't say that we ever look forward to seeing potentially beautiful ponds or lakes cursed by unappealing or even unhealthy water conditions. On the other hand, we often have the opportunity to join a project at the design phase and handle the installation as well, applying what we know about water quality from the first conceptualization of the watershape. That's always a welcome prospect: Not only is it exciting to

Echoing Green

The combination of water and plant material is so pervasive and obvious in natural and man-made settings that it's easy to take it for granted. In urban parks, rural settings and countless backyards, where one finds the blue, one also finds the green - and we all seem pre-wired

You really can find opportunities in unexpected places, insists Mehrnoosh, a Los Angeles architect and designer who enjoys making refined aesthetic statements in previously plain suburban environments. To illustrate her point, she takes us to a project in a modest neighborhood to define how simple architectural and landscape elements – and water – can bring elegance and tranquility to otherwise overlooked and underappreciated spaces.

Suburban Spaces

I've always been fascinated by the concept of urbanism as defined by Thomas Jefferson: He boiled it down to the notion that everyone should have his or her own private space as well as a buffer against the outside world. In a sense, the physical concept of the front yard fits perfectly within Jefferson's utopian ideal. At root, it's an ingenious setup that has probably endured for so many centuries because, on some level, it addresses our primal need to have land all around us. By the very configuration of our residential spaces, we each have a small, open, pastoral area that separates the privacy and sanctity of the home from adjacent public areas, sidewalks and streets. The problem is that in many modern cities and suburbs, the amount of room allocated for front yards in particular has dwindled as property values have soared and lots have become smaller and more tightly packed as a result. And when you combine that spatial shrinkage with the increased desire for safety and privacy on the part of many homeowners, it all works together to place ever-higher premiums on how we choose to make use of our small slices of front-yard land. To my mind, this dynamic set of trends

The ultra-high-end residences designed by environmental artists, architects and landscape planners Suzanne and Ron Dirsmith tend to be both elaborate and spectacular, but The Point at Hybernia is exceptional even by their standards. A wonderfully elaborate space meant to nurture the mind, body and spirit, it boasts a dizzying array of landscape and watershape features and is as vast in creative scope and scale as it is in fine detail and execution.

A Point Well Made

Serenity, comfort, repose. Delight in harmony with nature. These were the guiding principles behind The Point, one of 114 elegant homes gracing the 145-acre Hybernia development on the western boundary of Highland Park, a celebrated Chicago suburb located about 25 miles from downtown on a stretch of Lake Michigan known as the city's North Shore. We were initially called to Hybernia by a true visionary, David Hoffman, president of Red Seal Homes, the prime contractor for the development. He told us how his firm had struggled for years to acquire the parcels included in the development and wanted us to see that he was sensitive and attuned to the special nature of the setting and the history of its community. His first request: a design for a building that would house a pool and hydrotherapy spa for two of his most discriminating clients as a safe, secluded, calming harbor from their heavy international business travels. As it turned out, however, this was just the beginning of what would

Set in an affluent neighborhood in Cherry Hill, N.J., this project offered the Liquid Designs team a golden opportunity to transform a dull, aimless front yard into a sublimely beautiful and uniquely engaging environment. Here, designers David Tisherman and Kevin Fleming share a few words and a number of photographs that show just what they were after in using water, plants and masonry to exploit the power and drama of surprise.

Progressive Surprise

There's something in human nature that loves the unexpected. From pulling open gifts wrapped in paper, ribbons and bows to the thrill of rounding a forest trail to come upon a waterfall, the sense of anticipation and discovery adds spice to life and generally keeps things interesting. As designers of watershapes and landscapes, we have a tremendous opportunityto use the excitement that comes along with the process of progressively experiencing an environment. And the nice thing about setting up spaces that unfold as you move through them is that they can be organized around simple elements, from free-standing walls, steps or hedges to trees, fences and just about anything else thatpartially blocks, disrupts or interrupts a view. This project, which was first covered in "Details" in the December 2004 issue, is a perfect example of using a sense of