THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS July 22, 2020 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE Patient Perfection While true perfection is an elusive goal,Grant Smithbelieves in pursuing it by exceeding engineering and construction standards and paying attention to fine aesthetic details. And as he reports here, sometimes he ends up chasing it for clients who […]
Tag: site specific
2018/12.1, December 5 — Generic Plan Issues, India’s Stepwells, Aquatic Trends and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS December 5, 2018 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE Weighing the Options Instead of using soils and structural engineers to prepare plans tailored to a site’s specific needs, builders sometimes ordergeneric engineering plans and hope everything will work out for the best. That’s a debatable decision, writesPaolo Benedetti, for […]
Proportional Response
By Brian Van Bower
‘One of the real tricks in any art form can be the challenge of exercising restraint,’ wrote Brian Van Bower to open his Aqua Culture column in September 2003. ‘Bigger isn’t always better, and both scale and size do matter. In other words, just because you can create something grand, it doesn’t always mean that you should.’
‘This principle of proportionality has a sharp, specific meaning in the world of the custom watershaper,’ he continued, ‘especially when
2018/2.1, February 7 — Concrete Expectations, D.I.Y. Pond Save, Sustaining Pools and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS February 7, 2018 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE Color Clashes If you don’t prepare your clients for what will almost certainly happen to the appearance of this flashy form of decking and coping, writesPaolo Benedetti, you can find yourself facing unpleasant consequences — from encounters with peevish homeowners […]
Making a Mountain Haven
By Martin Mosko
I see gardens as entire worlds unto themselves – as complete and alive and distinct rather than as simple decorative extensions of architecture. Whatever form they might take, these spaces should carry us back into the peaceful parts of ourselves and to the calm, clear realms of our minds and spirits.
This outlook has, in my role as founder and principal of Marpa Design Studio of Boulder, Colo., led me to consider landscapes as integrated wholes rather than as cobbled assemblies of solutions to various problems. It’s a positive philosophy and design approach that is fully on display in the project depicted on these pages.
I was recommended by the architect, who was working with the owners of this sprawling Rocky Mountain estate on a major renovation of both the home and the surrounding land. From the start, I was told there was just one major theme in mind: The home and its surroundings were to look as natural as possible – as though everything had arisen organically from the roots of the mountains.
Neither house nor grounds possessed that spirit at the time, and the landscape was particularly deficient. Indeed, the only pre-existing feature was a cracked
An Elegant Slice
By Scott Murase
Our involvement with Vera Katz Park started with a phone call from Alan Beard of GBD Architects, a firm that has been responsible for designing several signature buildings in Portland, Ore.
The project at hand was the complex renovation and transformation of the city’s National Guard Armory into a modern theater and the new home of the Portland Center Stage Theater Company. After an energetic interview process, we were selected to design the site’s landscape.
We were enthusiastic about the project from the start. The sidewalk area we were designing is an integral part of the redevelopment of what’s known as the Pearl District, a former industrial area now being revitalized with mixed-use buildings and high-rise developments. At 200 feet long by 20 feet wide, the space presented an interesting design challenge in an area much in need of parks and public places.
The city’s goal is to establish pedestrian connections throughout the neighborhood while creating a sense of community within the district. For our part, we saw the site, which was to be named in honor of former Portland mayor Vera Katz, a devoted supporter of the arts who had been instrumental in the repurposing of the Armory Building, as an opportunity to create a
Falling Arches
By Rick Pendleton
For me, hitting the high notes in watershaping and landscape design is a product of careful observation, boundless imagination and detailed visualization. These factors drive the design process, after which I transition into the more practical phases of the project with reliable engineering and quality construction.
The early, creative phases can definitely be tricky, because they require many of my clients to take great leaps of faith, especially when what they’re after is a highly customized environment – something truly unique.
In those cases, we know that we at Artisan Home Resorts (San Jose, Calif.) are asking clients to visualize something nobody’s ever seen before: No matter how well we represent our ideas on paper or on a computer screen, the outcome will, to a certain degree, remain an abstraction until the everything is finished and working.
When everything finally comes together (as we believe it did in the project illustrated in this feature), a vision is realized and the payoff can be extremely rewarding, both for the clients and for those of us who worked hard to see the process through. Here as in few other projects we’ve done, however, even we weren’t precisely sure how
Falling Arches
By Rick Pendleton
For me, hitting the high notes in watershaping and landscape design is a product of careful observation, boundless imagination and detailed visualization. These factors drive the design process, after which I transition into the more practical phases of the project with reliable engineering and quality construction.
The early, creative phases can definitely be tricky, because they require many of my clients to take great leaps of faith, especially when what they’re after is a highly customized environment – something truly unique.
In those cases, we know that we at Artisan Home Resorts (San Jose, Calif.) are asking clients to visualize something nobody’s ever seen before: No matter how well we represent our ideas on paper or on a computer screen, the outcome will, to a certain degree, remain an abstraction until the everything is finished and working.
When everything finally comes together (as we believe it did in the project illustrated in this feature), a vision is realized and the payoff can be extremely rewarding, both for the clients and for those of us who worked hard to see the process through. Here as in few other projects we’ve done, however, even we weren’t precisely sure how
A Master at Work
By Raymond Jungles
I first became an admirer of Roberto Burle Marx while I was a student in landscape architecture at the University of Florida: His remarkable work, which combined a special brand of modernism with the lush potential of Brazilian settings, was incredibly powerful and the major formative influence on my own professional career.
I’d learned how to draw in school and had acquired the technical skills it took to be a landscape architect, but it was seeing how Burle Marx approached his landscapes and paintings – not to mention the way he lived his life – that gave me the spark I needed to define my own approach.
My personal relationship with him began soon after I graduated in 1981. I’d read an article in the Miami Herald about Burle Marx turning 70 and began writing to him in hopes he’d invite me to visit his home in Brazil. A couple of months later, I received a call from my friend Lester Pancoast, a well-known Miami architect. Burle Marx was in town and was staying as his houseguest, Pancoast explained, suggesting that since Burle Marx had a free evening I might want to take him to dinner.
My future wife and I spent a nice evening with Burle Marx, who was reserved but very polite and seemed all the while to be sizing us up. After dinner, we went to Pancoast’s home, where Burle Marx showed us
A Master at Work
By Raymond Jungles
I first became an admirer of Roberto Burle Marx while I was a student in landscape architecture at the University of Florida: His remarkable work, which combined a special brand of modernism with the lush potential of Brazilian settings, was incredibly powerful and the major formative influence on my own professional career.
I’d learned how to draw in school and had acquired the technical skills it took to be a landscape architect, but it was seeing how Burle Marx approached his landscapes and paintings – not to mention the way he lived his life – that gave me the spark I needed to define my own approach.
My personal relationship with him began soon after I graduated in 1981. I’d read an article in the Miami Herald about Burle Marx turning 70 and began writing to him in hopes he’d invite me to visit his home in Brazil. A couple of months later, I received a call from my friend Lester Pancoast, a well-known Miami architect. Burle Marx was in town and was staying as his houseguest, Pancoast explained, suggesting that since Burle Marx had a free evening I might want to take him to dinner.
My future wife and I spent a nice evening with Burle Marx, who was reserved but very polite and seemed all the while to be sizing us up. After dinner, we went to Pancoast’s home, where Burle Marx showed us