pool
It often happens that the way people enter a space has everything to do with the way they experience it and come to regard its overall design. This was much on my mind as we concluded our work on the Long Beach Island project I've discussed in my last few "Details." By orchestrating access and movement toward the backyard/pool area, we developed a string of transitions that lend a sense of surprise and delight to those entering a beautifully designed and constructed space that literally seems like a world apart. As discussed in previous columns, the backyard features a
When you work with any type of concrete, there are right and wrong ways to do things - basic issues of workmanship that really do determine whether a structure will be reliable or not. In the case of swimming pools and spas built using pneumatically applied concrete - either shotcrete or gunite - there's a presumption in structural design that the concrete will cure to the strength specified, which, in the case of pools and spas, is typically 2,000 pounds per square inch. If that's not the case, these structures do not meet their specifications and may be subject to failure as a result. To achieve that desired level of strength, the concrete must be
Water is one of the few artistic media that has the ability to define the architecture of human emotion. In all its various forms, it has affected us in profound ways since the dawn of our species, generating powerful feelings and the sense that we are somehow transformed when we're in its presence. As watershapers, we have an ability to use that long anthropological and cultural heritage to our advantage and can actually change the world: The spaces we create will, if done well, generate experiences so powerful that all who enter these environments will forever be changed by the encounter. I see this as both a wonderful opportunity and a solemn obligation. We can take the rich history of water and all its cultural reverberations and essentially use this symphony of tradition and creative impetuosity to compose new experiences for everyone who sees our work. If it's our intention to change the world for the better - something I personally have always held in mind - we do our best when we base our work on traditions assembled throughout human history. Working in that context, we not only gain access to the insights of the geniuses who have gone before us but also
Sometimes the simple things make all the difference between success and failure. For all of the high-flown conceptualizing that drives much of what so many watershapers do these days, there's no escaping the need for attention to
In the design and construction of any watershape, there are a number of points in the process where you can see big differences between the way custom designers and contractors do things and the way production/volume-oriented companies go about their business. From first conversations with clients straight through to commissioning the system and turning it over to the homeowners, it's easy to spot these distinctions and define key differences. To illustrate just one of these areas, let me discuss the case of the permitting phase for the project on Long Beach Island, N.J., I began covering two issues ago. What's involved here is a cluster of issues that occurred more or less simultaneously in the project's early going. The elements of this cluster may not seem directly related to one another, but
In most projects, great work requires the watershaper's personal understanding of who the clients really are, deep down. That doesn't mean we have to become our clients' best friends or marry into their families. Rather, creating watershapes at the highest level involves a different kind of relationship, one in which a shared vocabulary and common vision develop through discussions of water, stone, art, plants and the orchestration and staging of experiences that will occur in given spaces. Take the project covered here as an example: The scope of the work, an unlimited budget and a mandate for the highest possible levels of quality were enough on their own to force us to explore the limits of our skills and creativity. More important from our perspective, however, is that we
Contractors of all types are notorious for setting impossible-to-keep schedules, thereby disappointing clients and damaging their own credibility in the process. Sometimes, however, situations arise that require landshapers to shrink their established installation timetables, a necessity that will turn up the heat on even the most accomplished of contractors. For the project profiled in these pages, my clients had something come up that (from their perspective, anyway) necessitated completion of the project much earlier than anyone thought: They were expecting a baby and insisted that our delivery date should happen before theirs. The challenge we faced with the new timetable - just five months rather than the planned eight - was huge: It required truly constant interaction and communication with the clients and sub-contractors as well as intensive coordinating and expediting of a mind-boggling number of simultaneous processes - enough to drive us all crazy from time to time, but ultimately a
When we first began collaborating on projects with top-flight architects, landscape architects and landscape designers several years ago, for the most part our role in terms of design was fairly limited: We'd receive requests for bids and proposals based on plans of varying detail, and our role was that of faithful installers of the design. On occasions, of course, we'd also refer our own prospective clients to those same designers, who would generate plans that we would in turn estimate and very often install. We still work that way, but as we've built our ties to these accomplished artists, we've become aware that our role in their projects has been growing, even to the point where we are now being asked in many situations to offer our own design ideas. We're also seeing that, when on-site decisions must be made, these designers are
This project was all about fun and finding ways to infuse watershapes and the overall landscape with childlike senses of playfulness and wonder. At a glance, of course, it's obvious that this particular approach wouldn't work for too many clients, but in this case, we were working with a woman who wanted her yard to express her love of color, her sense of humor and her unparalleled inclination toward the unusual. From our first meeting, I knew that this was someone who wouldn't settle for anything that even approached the ordinary. Maybe it was the 12-foot-tall fiberglass chicken she'd placed in her front yard or the life-size hippopotamus in the backyard or her wildly eclectic taste in art and interior furnishings or her fittingly off-beat
One of the things I've referred to repeatedly through the years is my interest in quality forming for watershapes. I look at it this way: If the job is about creating quality reinforced-concrete structures, then precisely controlling their dimensions and contours stands at the very heart of the art and craft of watershaping. And all I'm recommending here is simply following the lead of the experts who install building foundations and structural walls by using completely rigid materials and support frameworks. To drive that point home, I want to discuss the forming of one specific detail - and define a right way of getting it done. One of my trademarks is the fact that I build many pools that are
