WaterShapes
There's little in life as soul-satisfying as working in a good cause. As pond professionals, of course, we get lots of opportunities to do nice things for our clients - by beautifying their backyards, bringing fish and aquatic plants into their lives and creating sources of soothing serenity they can enjoy each and every day. That's great, but in the project described in this article, the level of service reached a much higher plane. One of the cool things about
‘One of the fascinating things about working with the different types of clients we encounter as watershapers,’ wrote Brian Van Bower in his July 2007 Aqua Culture column in WaterShapes, ‘is that we can never really know what to expect. ‘If my years of experience have taught me anything,’ he added, ‘it’s that perception is often very different
As a mixed-use apartment complex in downtown Indianapolis, Ind., the not-quite-modestly named Artistry complex boasts sleek architecture and modern features intended to reflect the community's long history of skilled craftsmanship as well as its appreciation for the arts and commitment to active, energetic lifestyles. The main building features five stories of urban apartment homes above 68,000 square feet of commercial office space. Two additional buildings provide options for alternative accommodations, including
Who says you have to live in the Rockies to get the perfect mountain home? These clients are living that dream just outside Kansas City, Mo. Not long ago, they purchased land north of the Missouri River near Smithville, a rural outpost known for its rolling hills, plentiful trees and tobacco farms. It's a place where relatively low-cost land is still available, and people have started buying acreage and building their
This article concludes a little series I've been doing that feature bowls in association with my pool and spa designs. The first two were about water bowls in very different applications. This one is about fire bowls and, in greater detail, about materials you can put in them to cover the burners, disperse the flames and make them look good even when
I spent a couple strange hours the other day, surfing through Internet references to what I have discovered is a fairly lively Art-versus-Design debate. What I found was oddly interesting at first, but after a while, I began feeling underwhelmed by the whole discussion, which seemed mostly to be about trying to
Vanishing-edge walls have been a common design detail for the past 25-odd years and have been the subject of seminars and workshops almost as long as I can remember. Still, it's clear that there are several key points about how they should be designed and installed that elude watershapers who persist in treating these key structural components as little more than glorified in-pool spa dam walls or some other internal detail. You can probably
As I've intimated many times in these Travelogues, I'm a big fan of small water. I like rain chains. I prefer narrow scuppers to wide sheet falls. I like waterfalls with flows the diameter of my thumb rather than the span of a grand, old tree. What I like most of all these days are described as rills or runnels - little channels that artfully
Controlling Elements