WaterShapes
The Best of Ripples 2010 Watershaping, as everyone knows, is serious business - but as Ripples has conclusively proved since its debut earlier this year, the world of watershaping can also be wild and wacky. It wasn't easy for Ripples to pick
TO: You FROM: Santa 1. May your clients be patient and understanding whenever
Interview by WaterShapes' Elves He is known by many names in many places — including Father Christmas, Kriss Kringle and Saint Nicholas — but in America, wide-eyed children of all ages mainly know him as Santa Claus. Imagine our surprise at WaterShapes when we received an e-mail from
How do you define artistry? That’s a highly subjective question, of course, but I’ve always thought of it as a completed work that radiates impressions of insight, effort, skill and mastery – even in seemingly ordinary applications. Breaking it down further, materials are my personal passion – how they are selected and, far more important, how they are used. Indeed, while the presence of wonderful materials alone can make their impression no matter how banal a design, when the person wielding those wonderful materials has the
No matter the field, keeping up with the latest product developments is critical to supplying clients with state-of-the-art results. It’s also important to track current design and application trends and to distinguish innovations of true value from those that don’t add up or aren’t far enough along the developmental curve to warrant broad acceptance. Using my field of landscape lighting as an example, the past quarter century has seen a small clutch of products and technologies that have made the grade – the chief among them being
One of the most common themes repeated in this magazine is that selecting materials for projects can make the difference between truly artistic designs and those that are either inappropriate or just plain boring. It’s a point worth pressing: Materials truly matter, and the importance of knowing your options and keeping pace with changes in the marketplace can never be overestimated. Through the past few months, for example, I’ve been working with a couple who live in a home that’s an architectural
We know that the equipment and materials they offer us stand at the core of everything we design and/or build as watershapers. Nonetheless, it’s easy to overlook the significant role played by those who manufacture, distribute and support the products we use. As I see it, however, discounting the role of suppliers in the watershaping process is a serious mistake. Not only do these companies
Welcome to WaterShapes’ 2011 Resource Directory! It’s our way of wrapping up a year’s worth of issues with a special edition that anticipates your professional needs in times to come. Simply put, we’ve beaten the bushes and amassed a treasure trove of information that gives you direct, easy access to the products and services you’ll need to excel in the design, engineering and construction of watershapes and outdoor environments of all types in 2011 and beyond. Since the magazine’s debut a dozen years ago, we’ve served as
New Year’s Greetings from Eric Herman