The Idea Factory

Eric Herman

I’m constantly amazed by innovation: Just when you think a device or system or technology has reached its limits, something comes along to advance things a notch or two and the whole cycle begins again.

And the most interesting thing is that innovation often comes without truly being driven by need. Take telecommunications as an example: We were all getting along pretty well with land-based telephones when pagers and then cellular phones came along, and now it’s reached a point where cell phones do more than most of us will ever need them to do, from taking digital images to sending and receiving e-mails – and you can still phone home as well.

This sort of thing was much on my mind as the July issue of WaterShapes came together – particularly as relates to two articles that take the basic concept of the swimming pool and push it in innovative directions that may foretell many interesting developments to come.

You’ll find the first of them in the form of “Swimming with Nature” by Bob Dews (click here). Here, a longtime WaterShapes contributor and master of naturalistic ponds, streams and waterfalls describes a recent project in which, under orders from a client, he developed a pond that is not only made for swimming, but also includes play features I’ve never seen on such a watershape before.

As Dews points out, many people who want ponds to beautify their properties also end up using them as places to get wet, even though these watershapes aren’t designed for such usage. When asked to make one deliberately functional as a “swimming hole,” he went several steps beyond basic by including a tubular slide, a cave and several details borrowed from the bags of tricks of pool designers, including beach entries and zones for playing and swimming.

Of course, the “swimming pond” isn’t a new concept, but nowhere before have I seen anyone push the hybridization process to such an extent. As Dews makes clear, this is not a swimming pool made to look natural, but is instead a pond meant to allow for safe and easy human interaction.

That hybridizing spirit takes an entirely different turn with the technology on display in “Rethinking the Pool” by Stephan Kanetis and David Stone (click here). I first met these gentlemen at a trade show in 2008 and was stopped in my tracks by their “hidden-water pools,” in which a pool becomes a patio and vice versa.

As they point out in the article, their system allows for multiple uses for a space, saves energy and chemicals and is unusually safe by any standard, basically because the water completely vanishes as a hazard when the floor of the pool rises to deck level.

It’s immaterial whether either one of these ideas catches hold and results in wide pursuit of these watershaping options: What’s most important – from my perspective at least – is that Dews, Kanetis and Stone (and others like them) are out there and entirely willing to play with the basic assumptions upon which the watershaping industry operates.

I tip my hat to all of them once for stepping up with extremely creative and innovative ideas. I tip my hat to them a second time for moving boldly into new realms at a time when so many talented people seem to be in holding patterns, waiting for the economy to turn around and a situation approaching normalcy to reappear.

I can’t predict the future, but my guess is that Dews, Kanetis and Stone have exactly the kind of courage and gumption that will be required to advance our industry in the months and years to come.