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I had started writing a completely different blog a few days back when a headline burst in to rattle my sense of calm: "6 Reasons to Demolish Your Swimming Pool Before Summer." Written by Wendy Helfenbaum and published
Waterpark design is typically about delivering the fun, comfort, safety and excitement guests have come to expect from these expansive aquatic playgrounds. Here, veteran theme-park lifeguard Brett Herman offers his deck-level perspective on key factors to be considered in making these environments work not only for the paying public, but also for the young people charged with the practicalities of managing these busy spaces. On any given day in some spot around the globe, a waterpark will add some new feature or other or opens its doors for the very first time, and the design focus is always about developing systems and mechanisms that will lead to a strong popular response and increasing financial success. If there's a fly in the ointment here, it's that these facilities are
Waterpark design is typically about delivering the fun, comfort, safety and excitement guests have come to expect from these expansive aquatic playgrounds. Here, veteran theme-park lifeguard Brett Herman offers his deck-level perspective on key factors to be considered in making these environments work not only for the paying public, but also for the young people charged with the practicalities of managing these busy spaces. On any given day in some spot around the globe, a waterpark will add some new feature or other or opens its doors for the very first time, and the design focus is always about developing systems and mechanisms that will lead to a strong popular response and increasing financial success. If there's a fly in the ointment here, it's that these facilities are
"No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being." - Ansel Adams The man considered by many to be the father of American landscape architecture often referred to himself as a "garden maker," a self-description by Fletcher Steele that influenced me greatly when I first saw it in a book about him in 1990. When I think of the word "making" on its own, I see images of human hands crafting cherished artifacts or offerings, while the word "garden" conjures a host of images from Eden to Shangri-La. Taken together, however, the words evoke even more powerful images of the deliberate shaping of places of great beauty and serene repose - an apt definition for any landscape professional. When I borrowed those
Most people move easily through the world, enjoying the scenery without really thinking about what makes those surroundings visually appealing (or not). Science tells us that the human eye can see about seven million colors and that our minds instinctively perceive depth and dimension. This visual capacity enables most of us to move around without bumping into things, some of us to swing at and somehow hit a golf ball and, in the case of a beautiful garden (we can hope), all of us sense pleasure and maybe a bit of
