rooms

After leaving us with a cliffhanger last month, Scott Christie follows up here with information on the clients' surprise request and on the process of bringing the backyard into final form with -- in addition to the original pool and spa -- a new pond system and, oh yes, a crumbling ruin.

Up from the Ruins

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

When Ian McGregor approaches a backyard project, he does all he can to embrace the entire environment. In doing so for this project, he created connections between existing indoor spaces and new outdoor rooms that echo familiar functions while injecting dashes of fun.

Indoors Out

The modern concept of "outdoor living" took hold a long time ago - the very first time a homeowner set up a barbecue grill somewhere near the backyard pool, then figured out a way to enjoy a family meal al fresco. This sort of casual and mostly seasonal approach held on for decades, but approaches to outdoor living took a giant leap forward in the 1990s, when swimming pools started being joined in increasing numbers of backyards by