WaterShapes Archives - Page 100 of 421

Paths of Discovery

India's stepwells are truly amazing, but relatively few people know anything about them. Victoria Lautman wants to change all that, reporting on their long history in a book -- and in a series for WaterShapes on three of the country's most wondrous architectural and cultural treasures.

Engaging Ideas

This edition of the WaterShapes newsletter carries two unusual articles. One is Victoria Lautman's piece on the stepwells of India; the other is Lauren Stack's look at water-related trends and the importance of helping more people learn to

Instead of using soils and structural engineers to prepare plans tailored to a site's specific needs, builders sometimes order generic engineering plans and hope everything will work out for the best. That's a debatable decision, writes Paolo Benedetti, for reasons he lays out here.

Weighing the Options

In recent years, I've witnessed or participated in enjoyable conversations about the fact that pools, spas, fountains and other waterfeatures are now more complex than they've ever been. What I've heard and seen less often, however, is equivalent bantering about the fact that engineering plans for such projects must keep pace if these elaborate watershapes are to perform - as they should - well into the future. In this context of progress and success, it should trouble watershapers that large numbers of builders persist in relying on generic structural plans when it's time to break ground on their projects - even on those that