statuary
Effectively collaborating with clients usually requires finding some kind of connection, be it personal, intellectual or experiential. Sometimes you really have to dig to find that common ground, but there are those situations where it's immediately obvious. The latter is exactly what happened
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
As watershape design expands beyond the mostly recreational traditions of the recent past, more of us are being asked these days to design water elements that work more decoratively and serve to frame, reflect and otherwiseaccentuate or accompany art pieces. In these situations, a pool, fountain or basin design is visually driven by the artwork, and whether the project is done for a private residence or a commercial complex, the results can be wonderfully dynamic. In most cases, requests for this design approach come from an owner who has a particular piece in mind; in a few other cases, the artist will commission a watershape to accompany a main attraction of his or her devising and becomes a key participant in the design process. All in all, I see this as another manifestation of a trend in which
One of the compliments we appreciate most at Root Design Co. is when people say that no two of our projects look alike. Indeed, we pride ourselves on being able to work effectively across a broad spectrum of styles and use both time-tested and innovative building methods in ways that let us focus on details and on making certain we’re always generating work that speaks directly to our clients’ unique tastes and desires. To maintain our edge, we limit the number of projects we tackle each year and, at the same time, seek out clients whose enthusiasm matches our own when it comes to pursuing
Landscape-lighting design is my obsession: Not only do I make my living at it, but it has also reached a point where it informs the way I look at every landscape and watershape I encounter - whether I'm working on those spaces or not. When I visit almost any site - and particularly when I spot an interesting garden - I almost instantaneously begin formulating ideas about how I'd light it. That's a good thing, because it keeps me professionally sharp, but it's also a bit addictive: Once you start visualizing how dynamic particular places can be when properly lit, you get hooked on the mental exercise and start enjoying the intensity of the experience. In the beginning, of course, those clear visualizations
Landscape-lighting design is my obsession: Not only do I make my living at it, but it has also reached a point where it informs the way I look at every landscape and watershape I encounter - whether I'm working on those spaces or not. When I visit almost any site - and particularly when I spot an interesting garden - I almost instantaneously begin formulating ideas about how I'd light it. That's a good thing, because it keeps me professionally sharp, but it's also a bit addictive: Once you start visualizing how dynamic particular places can be when properly lit, you get hooked on the mental exercise and start enjoying the intensity of the experience. In the beginning, of course, those clear visualizations
From my first visit, I knew I'd be spending a lot of time here developing the watershapes and landscapes on this amazing site. Set on a bluff in Del Mar, Calif., the whole property slopes down from the street level to the back edge of the property. Beyond was an open space offering uninterrupted views of a river estuary, native coastal scrub studded with rare, indigenous, protected Torrey Pines and the Del Mar shoreline's pounding surf. There were also the spectacularly patterned cliffs at Torrey Pines State Park - a vista and set of colors that ultimately determined material choices for this project. It helped that I was completely at ease with
From my first visit, I knew I'd be spending a lot of time here developing the watershapes and landscapes on this amazing site. Set on a bluff in Del Mar, Calif., the whole property slopes down from the street level to the back edge of the property. Beyond was an open space offering uninterrupted views of a river estuary, native coastal scrub studded with rare, indigenous, protected Torrey Pines and the Del Mar shoreline's pounding surf. There were also the spectacularly patterned cliffs at Torrey Pines State Park - a vista and set of colors that ultimately determined material choices for this project. It helped that I was completely at ease with
It has always bothered me a bit that designers tend to restrict their thinking to just the physical area that fits the definition of their design specialty. Landscape designers stick to outdoor spaces and interior designers work on interior ones - and seldom the twain shall meet. To my way of thinking, that's shortsighted - which is just one of the reasons I'm both a landscape designer and an interior designer. I would argue that, when it is appropriate, professionals on both sides of the divide need to open their eyes and work with the visual flow through and between clients' interior and exterior spaces to achieve optimal design results. As landscape professionals, we already accept the importance of the "borrowed view," a wonderful term used to describe the deliberate capturing of other properties' assets by creating living or artificial frameworks that make them an artistic component of our clients' landscapes. If we are good at capturing neighboring views for our landscapes, I'd suggest it's a short step to make certain that we achieve the same sorts of wonderful views between the
It's amazing how the traditions of art and craft tracing back through centuries still inform today's designs. That's particularly true in the field of garden ornamentation, where modern statuary, fountains, vases and seating elements take their cues from original works found in ancient Greece and China, in Renaissance Italy and France - and from just about every other era and location around and between. This depth of available imagery is both a boon and a challenge to those in the business of supplying garden ornaments to today's architects, landscape architects, watershapers and their clients. There's just
