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E n g i n e e r i n g

C o n s t r u c t i o n

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26

36

44

march 2010

HistoricPerspectives

By Anthony Archer Wills

Inside the design of agrand pond/stream

system

GracefulTransformations

By Colleen Holmes

A symphony in antiques, stone, plants and water

Straight andNarrow

By Joan Roca

Finding the energyin long, simple shapes

4 • watershapes march 2 0 10 www.watershapes.com

Features

Contents

In This Issue

Advertiser Index

Spotlight Index

In the Spotlight

54

8

54

55

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Volume 12 • Number 3

On the Cover: Photo by Deidra Walpole, Deidra Walpole Photography, Woodland Hills, Calif.; courtesy New Leaf Landscape, Agoura Hills, Calif.

StructuresBy Eric Herman

Assigning creditwhere credit’s due

6

Aqua CultureBy Brian Van Bower

Bringing sophisticationto client interviews

10

On the LevelBy Bruce Zaretsky

Making headwaywith healing gardens

CurrentsBy Mike Gambino

Keys to success in lighting outdoor rooms

Book NotesBy Mike Farley

Fresh approaches to anall-too-familiar material

58

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Printed in the U.S.A.

Through the years – but particularly within the past two or three – one of thecomments I’ve heard with the greatest frequency is that WaterShapes is im-proving dramatically with respect to the content it presents.

I’m always happy to hear any kind of positive feedback, but I’m also curi-ous to know what about our coverage seems to be improving the most and usu-ally ask those who are making these comments to tell me more.

What comes back when I ask for specifics is quite simple: The projects we’recovering nowadays, they say,are superior to those we held up as examples of ex-cellence in years past. What they’re telling me, in other words, is not thatWaterShapes has gotten so much better; rather, it’s watershapers who’ve steppedup a couple levels: What we’re publishing shows their visible,marked improve-ments in creativity, style, technical sophistication, overall concept, sensitivity tosite, sense of color, materials selections and more – rather than our ingenuityin bringing these projects to print.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for letting our magazine get credit whereit’s due, and I know we’ve played a part in all of this by having our eyes andears open in lots of the right places at the right times. We have, in other words,shown some skill in creating a forum. But in reality, we’ve stayed relativelyconstant through the years, and the differences so many of you are perceivinghave to do with progress so many of you have made toward playing the gameat a higher level.

As I see it, it’s a great combination: The magazine is more valued and ap-preciated by its readers because the work’s getting better and better as time goesby and is drawing the magazine along with it.

Let’s take this issue as a case in point, because it covers three projects that areworthy examples of what I see as being watershaping’s march to excellence. Westart with a contribution from Anthony Archer Wills – “Historic Perspectives”beginning on page 26. It’s a bit hard to believe it after all these years, but thisis his first-ever project profile for WaterShapes, and in it he begins coverage ofa gargantuan residential project in southern Wisconsin where he’s using a com-plex system of ponds and streams to add new dimension to a historic proper-ty. I’ve always considered him to be the poet laureate of watergardening, andthe reasons why are much in evidence in this article.

Next comes a project from landscape designer Colleen Holmes, who sharessome of her best work to date in “Graceful Transformation” (page 36). Here,she tells us how she used myriad watershaping and landscape details to createexterior spaces of almost mesmerizing tranquility and, between the lines, re-veals the fact that she’s yet another restless spirit who’s pushing creativity to thelimit in just about every project she tackles.

Finally, Joan Roca covers one of his most recent projects in “Straight andNarrow”(page 44),a detailed look at a spectacular pool he built for a resort com-plex near his home in Costa Rica. Joan is a tremendous artist, and in this in-stance he’s taken manifestly simple forms and vested them with profound func-tional beauty.

If presenting such material makes it seem as though the magazine is im-proving, that’s a wonderful side benefit. As I see it, the main point is that we’resharing the state of the art with you and are more than satisfied to see that thestate of the art keeps right on advancing.

Pursuit of PerfectionBy Eric Herman

tructuresS

6 • watershapes march 2010 www.watershapes.com


Anthony Archer Wills is a landscape artist, master water-gardener and author based in Copake Falls, N.Y. Growing upclose to a lake on his parents’ farm in southern England, hewas raised with a deep appreciation for water and nature – arespect he developed further at Summerfield’s School, a cam-pus abundant in springs, streams and ponds. He began hisown aquatic nursery and pond-construction business in theearly 1960s, work that resulted in the development of newapproaches to the construction of ponds and streams usingconcrete and flexible liners. The Agricultural Training Boardand British Association of Landscape Industries subsequent-ly invited him to train landscape companies in techniquesthat are now included in textbooks and used throughout the

world. Archer Wills tackles projects worldwide and hastaught regularly at Chelsea Physic Garden, Inchbald Schoolof Design, Plumpton College and Kew Gardens. He has alsolectured at the New York Botanical Garden and at the univer-sities of Miami, Cambridge,York and Durham as well as forthe Association of Professional Landscape Designers and thePhilosophical Society. He is a 2008 recipient of The JosephMcCloskey Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Art &Craft of Watershaping.

Colleen Holmes is president of New Leaf Landscape, afull-service landscape design/construction firm based inAgoura Hills, Calif. A landscape designer with more than 30

n This IssueIMarch’s Writers



years’ experience, she began her career as a child at the side ofher father, Charles Prowse, who instilled in her a love of theart of landscape design. She studied landscape architectureat the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, Calif., where shewas profoundly influenced by sculptor/landscape artistMichael Watling, and later attended UCLA’s school of land-scape architecture. Her early work focused on designs forcountry clubs and gated communities in the CoachellaValley. Since then, Holmes has run her own pool and land-scape maintenance firms and founded her first landscape de-sign/construction company in 1980. She established her cur-rent firm in 1987 and now focuses exclusively on high-endresidential projects including a number of celebrities’ homes.

Interested in writing for WaterShapes on design, engineering or construction topics? Contact Eric Herman at (714) 313-6136!

Joan Roca is a watershape designer and installer based inGuanacaste, Costa Rica, and founder and principal ofAquart, the country’s only custom watershaping firm.Born in Barcelona, Spain, he holds a degree in industrialengineering and began his career in swimming pool con-struction in 1975 in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital. Roca’ssearch for watershape-design education led him a few yearsback to the Genesis 3 Design Group, which he credits withtransforming his approach to design and construction andled him to reconstitute his company with its current namein 2003 with a new focus on high-end custom work. Hecan be reached at www.aquart.com


qua CultureA


or the best part of 20 years now, trendwatchers have tracked Baby Boomersand have kept telling us that, as we

aged, we’d definitely become homebodies –so much so that the words “nesting,” “co-cooning” and “staycation” have all taken sig-nificant places in our social vocabulary.

It’s a concept I’ve touched upon in thesepages – numerous times, in fact – while ob-serving that watershapes and other aquaticamenities go hand in glove with the home-body trend. Always, my basic point has been:It’s time to think in terms of providing ourBoomer clients with complete outdoor en-vironments that will make their home ex-perience as pleasurable as they could everwant it to be.

So far, I haven’t read any studies of just howthoroughly the homebody phenomenon hastruly manifested itself and whether or not itis as real as some would have us believe. That’stoo bad, but it hasn’t gotten in my way: I’ve

seen for myself what’s happening and,although it’s the productof my own observations and anecdotes I’ve heard from oth-ers, I think my perspective is valid.

As I see it, not only has the prediction that more and morepeople will want to stay home and take their vacations at homeactually come to pass, but it has done so on a much more ex-tensive and pervasive scale than any of us would have dared tobelieve ten or 15 years ago.

all in oneI’ve reached this conclusion because of what the prepon-

derance of my Boomer-vintage clients have consistently beentelling me – and, more important, how what they are saying isreflected in their purchasing decisions.

In one way or another,many of them have indicated that theywant all of the luxuries of a resort property in their own back-yards. Even though they definitely can afford to travel, they tellme that they increasingly prefer the safe, familiar, convenienttrappings of home,especially if the environment provides a funplace for kids to play as they grow and, eventually, as they starthaving children of their own.

I suspect this demographic trend has a lot to do with whymany of the custom watershapers I know have continued tothrive in this dreary economy. When you add in the weaknessof the dollar and the fact that overseas vacations are more ex-pensive than they once were, people seem to prefer investingtheir recreational dollars in something unique that providesgreater and longer-lasting value.

I believe that cable television has played a role here in the formof HGTV and other home-improvement-oriented channels. Sohave magazine racks, through the proliferation of publicationstargeting consumers interested in home improvement, region-al styles and upscale living. It’s clear to me that prospective clientsare spurred as well by memories of places they’ve been: Whenyou couple that with inspiring images of lavish spaces seen in themedia, the upshot is that they’re keenly interested in bringingsimilar slices of the good life to their own backyards.

It also hasn’t hurt that creativity in the watershaping and land-

Digging for Insight

More and more people arestaying home and taking their

vacations at home, and on amuch more extensive and

pervasive scale than any of us would have dared to

believe ten or 15 years ago.

By Brian Van Bower

F

scaping markets has advanced by leapsand bounds in recent years,at least on thecustom side of the business. Not to gooverboard with self-congratulation, butthe fact that many of us have expandedour thinking in terms of design possibil-ities has helped bring greater ranges ofchoice to clients in ways that have nodoubt driven far more expansive and in-clusive designs.

Finally, I’ve found that consumers,par-ticularly those investing in custom wa-tershapes, are much more sophisticatedthan they once were when it comes toknowing what they want – which bringsme to a point where I’ll resume the dis-cussion about client contact I began inthe last issue and the methods I use toelicit information that will help me suc-ceed for them in the design process.

Last time, if you’ll recall, I covered ap-proaches to interviewing clients and de-scribed my own interview technique assomething that is constantly growing andevolving in response to what I learn fromother watershapers as well as my clients.I also outlined some broad ideas of whatI was after, which will lead me this timeto narrow the focus and suggest someways of digging even deeper into clients’wants and needs.

future memoriesAs mentioned last time, I start by ask-

ing clients why we’re meeting and ma-neuver the conversation around to askingthem how they visualize using a water-shape. Armed with that basic informa-tion, I start to hone in on their more spe-cific likes and dislikes and a range of otherconsiderations as I prompt them to visu-alize, imagine and desire.

Here are some of the questions I use toferret out the information I need:

� Have you ever had a pool before? Ifyes, what did you like about it – and whatdidn’t you like? The answers here can betremendously revealing. You might, forexample,discover that the clients enjoyednothing so much as swimming laps,lounging in the shade near the water’sedge or diving into the deep end at theend of a long day at work. On the flipside, you might learn that they were dis-gusted by the smell of chlorine, didn’t

like the way pool plaster felt on their feetor hated having to pay attention to wa-ter chemistry.

I’ve found that this single question re-veals a great deal about their water-relat-ed experiences and dials in on specific is-sues in the context of a lifetime’s spectrumof memories, some good and some notso good. In fact, even if their initial an-swer is “No, never had a pool,” almosteveryone can conjure feelings about wa-tershapes from the well of memory andgive me ideas and images I can use in get-ting them to visualize the project at hand.

�How important to you is the visual as-pect of the design? Of all the visualization-prompting questions I ask, this one real-ly seems to do the trick with many of myclients. I’ve always been surprised by howmany of them will say that they reallydon’t care about how their watershape willlook; instead, they’re all about how it willfunction and say that so long as it’s not aneyesore, they’ll be all right with it.

Of course,many of them just start outthat way because they’ve never visualizedanything beyond swimming in a pool orsitting in a spa or watching a waterfall:When they begin to visualize things inthe context of their own backyards,manyof them come around to the aesthetic sideof the process and start caring about howthings will look. Not all of them makethis transition, of course, but most will.

Then there are those who are entirelyabout aesthetics, don’t care much aboutfunction and are mostly interested inmaking a statement. That’s when I ask,“How big a statement?” In some cases,I learn that their primary desire is to im-

press other people with the lavishness ofthe details or the fineness of the materi-als,while in others they let me know thatthey want the watershape to reflect theirtastes in art and architecture in all sortsof subtle ways.

� Do you swim? How important to youis aquatic exercise? In my last column, Iwrote about asking clients to visualize howthey’ll use their watershape, so in manycases I already know the quick answer tothese questions. But if anything they’vesaid makes me doubt the clarity withwhich they’re considering how they’ll usea swimming pool or spa, I hit them withthese questions to find out whether or notthey intend on swimming, exercising orengaging in a specific activity such as div-ing, volleyball or water polo.

In other words, while they may havementioned swimming at the outset,withthis question I get them to focus on thephysical aspects of owning a watershape– and often the answers are much moredetailed and nuanced now, especiallywhen it comes to the subject of exercise.

Along with the cocooning trend amongBaby Boomers, it’s clear that consumersnear or beyond retirement age have turnedto exercise routines and pursuit of physi-cal fitness in a big way to fight aging andimprove the quality of their lives. There’salso growing evidence (reported in de-tail in past issues of WaterShapes) aboutthe profound health benefits of aquatic ex-ercise, and I’m prepared to offer that in-formation to reinforce my clients’thoughtsabout its value.

Along those lines, I’ve also becomeversed in the use of devices including un-derwater treadmills, swim jets and otherfitness-related features. If clients get in-terested,we start talking about zones andorganizing areas for different activities,from diving to water sports and hy-drotherapy. Some people get deeply,emotionally involved with their water-shapes here, and it all makes sense:They’ve started visualizing a healthylifestyle in relation to an aquatic envi-ronment, and it all feels good.

� Do you entertain? Again, this mayhave been answered back when I askedabout intended use, but as with the ex-ercise questions, I’ve found that deeper

qua CultureA


I’ve found that consumers, particularly

those investing in custom watershapes,

are much more sophisticated than

they once were whenit comes to knowing

what they want.

inquiry here a bit later in the conversationcan be quite beneficial to the process.

As a social animal myself, I’m often sur-prised in speaking with people who saythey don’t entertain at all. For the mostpart, however, I find that people increas-ingly have highly developed ideas aboutthe entertaining they have in mind. Tobe sure, developing designs for outdoorentertaining is a huge topic that could be(and probably will be) the subject of fu-ture columns. It covers a vast range ofsubjects focused on space allocation andamenities ranging from outdoor kitchensand pizza ovens to seating areas and out-door sound and video systems – so suf-fice it to say here that when clients expressinterest in entertaining, you can delvedeeply into what they want and needthrough this question.

�Do you sunbathe? This may seem anodd question at a time when people areincreasingly paranoid about exposingthemselves to the sun, but there are stillpeople out there who like to bask andwork on their tans. If the clients prove tobe tanning enthusiasts, accommodatingthem is a simple matter of designatingpart of the design as a sunbathing area.

Perhaps more important, if the answeryou get here is negative in its attitudeabout sun exposure, it leads you direct-ly to an important follow-up question:

�What are your thoughts on shade? Evensun worshipers, of course, need refugefrom the sun from time to time. In fact,addressing the need for shade should be auniversal component in our projects,butthat’s not what I’ve observed in the field.

Shade structures these days are trulymarvelous, and in many cases I’d evencategorize them as sculptural works ofart. They can be relatively small, cover-ing a limited part of a patio, or they canbe expansive to the point where wholerigging systems are used to shade entirebodies of water with retractable awningsor screens.

Umbrellas are another wonderful op-tion that comes into play,and clients seemto like them because they can easily bemoved from place to place. These days,in fact, we’re often asked to design poolareas with multiple umbrella sleeves tomaximize flexibility in shade manage-

ment around and sometimes within thewatershape.

This discussion also leads to anotherquestion:

� Have you thought about a shallowlounging area in the water? How about araised seating area next to the water? Bythis point, you should already have agood sense of how or if your clients planto socialize in or around the water, butexperience once again has shown me thatrelatively few of them are aware of whatcan be done these days with shallowlounging areas,beach entries, raised-edgeseating areas, step treatments and raisedplanter edges.

I’ve noticed as well that there are largenumbers of people who love being nearthe water or in partial contact with itwhile staying completely or mostly dry.Grandparents, for example, often enjoyhaving a convenient place to lounge whilewatching the grandkids play nearby. Andthere are those people who don’t swimbut like being in contact with the waterwithout complete immersion.

On that level, this question adds depthand new meaning to discussions you’vealready had about entertaining. In myexperience, if I explain and illustrate thesefeatures and get my clients to visualizethem, it’s yet another way to get them tobuy into the process on a whole newrange of emotional and physical levels.

anything and everythingIf you read between the lines of what

I’ve written in these two columns, mymeaning is clear: When you promptyour clients to look forward and see howthey’ll interact with the environmentyou’re discussing, the better you’ll be ableto engage them in the process,meet theirneeds and make dreams come true –even dreams they might not have knownthey could have.

What I try to do through the entire in-terview process is to make my questionsor lines of follow-up questions open-end-ed, because there’s no telling where yourclients will lead you if you give them thelatitude to do so.

In opening things up, you might runinto someone who’s obsessed with watertemperature, for example, and spend a

good bit of time discussing various op-tions for maintaining it at just the rightlevel. You might find environmentalistswho want their systems to be as green andsustainable as possible. You might findpeople who are so good at the visualiza-tion process and so adept at workingthrough options that the design processwill fly by.

Again, it’s all about getting them toopen up,and I’ve found through the yearsthat a deliberate interview process is thebest way to get it done so long as I listenwell and establish a decent rapport.

As I see it, this approach to interview-ing is enjoyably hard work, often comeswith surprises and involves conversationaltechniques that can be applied across theboard in discussions of pools, spas, foun-tains, lighting systems,deck systems,out-door amenities,outbuildings and much,much more.

This is where being at the cutting edgeof the exterior design business gets to bea great deal of fun. Opening clients’eyesto the wonders of laminar jets, waterfallsand streams; to the joys of quiet water inthe form of reflecting pools or ponds;to materials of all types and descriptions;to control technology, water-in-transitsystems and fire elements: It makes mehappy just to think about what can be ac-complished with the right clients in theright circumstances.

I always remind myself that we’re inthe business of providing venues forhuman experience – an incredibly im-portant responsibility for us and a verypersonal commitment from the home-owners with whom we work. To getthings right, we owe it to them to helpthem visualize a better future: All ittakes is a clear mind, open ears and alittle list of questions.


WS

Brian Van Bower runs Aquatic Consultants,a design firm based in Miami, Fla., and is aco-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group;dedicated to top-of-the-line performance inaquatic design and construction, this orga-nization conducts schools for like-mindedpool designers and builders. He can bereached at [email protected].

On the Level


ot long ago,I did a pair of columns onhealing gardens and their benefits. Ifyou’ll recall, I preached the impor-

tance of persuading hospitals in particularto include these spaces in their overall site plansas a means of providing garden environmentsfor patients, patients’ families and hospitalstaff: These spaces reduce stress,help patientsheal more quickly and give everyone who vis-its them a soothing sense of tranquility.

I’ve attempted to the greatest extent possi-ble to practice what I preached, and throughthe years I’ve installed numerous health-spe-cific gardens at local assisted-living centers,Alzheimer’s care facilities and even at a centerfor emotionally challenged children. But truthbe told, I haven’t met with much success withour local hospitals, despite the fact that heal-ing gardens have caught on with countlesssuch facilities coast to coast.

I don’t know quite why this is, but we justhaven’t had much luck getting larger insti-tutions to buy into the concept. In fact, justgetting an appointment with decision-mak-ers is an exercise in pulling teeth. But in oneinstance a couple years ago, a serendipitous

encounter gave us the break we needed, and it’s a story wellworth telling here.

wear and tearMany of you can probably relate to the fact that watershap-

ing or landscape contracting can be hard on a body. I know I’vespent many years abusing mine: Nobody can set stone betterthan I can,of course, so I set them all. Nobody works with bricksas well as I do either, naturally, so I’ve installed square miles ofthem.

And so it came to pass in 2004 that my body rebelled: Painforced me to seek out a neck specialist to assess why I couldn’tlook up, sideways or down without discomfort. The neurosur-geon asked me what I did for a living that could be so hellishas to result in the MRI results he was reviewing, and once I toldhim, he proceeded to tell us a moving story.

It took us a few minutes to figure out the relevance of his tale,but the payoff was wonderful.

One day, he said, his daughter suddenly experienced a paral-ysis that affected most of her body. A virus had attacked her ner-vous system (it turned out to be Giullain-Barré Syndrome) andwas so nasty that she couldn’t move any part of her body belowher neck and was in grave danger. The doctor, a nationallyrenowned expert in his field, could do nothing for her but waitand hope. He stayed at his daughter’s side day and night forthe week or so in which she fought for her life. Gradually, shewon the battle and began regaining her mobility almost as sud-denly as she’d lost it.

One day as she recovered, the doctor who was so accustomedto solving his other patients’ problems but had been helplessto do anything for his own child, asked her if there was any-thing he could do now that she was safe. “I want to go outside,”she said.

The doctor immediately unhooked everything attached to herand wheeled her bed out of the room, down the hallway andthrough the door into the rain. His daughter told him later thatshe had never felt so much joy as when the raindrops fell on herface. He immediately wondered why there wasn’t a space set aside

Medical Arts

We aimed to create a space that could be occupied by more

than one user at a time, withspaces available for solitude

and private contemplation aswell as discussions among

small groups.

By Bruce Zaretsky

N


for all patients to have such experiences.As soon as he finished his story with

that question,my partner Sharon Coatesand I immediately told him,“We can helpyou there.” On the spot, he hired us todesign a garden in a space on the hospi-tal site that wasn’t being used. We cameup with a conceptual plan, prepared arough budget and presented the packageto him.

He was fully committed to the pro-ject and had the wherewithal to pull itoff because of his role as one of the hos-pital’s principal fundraisers. But therewas a catch: Unbeknownst to him, thespace for which we’d designed the gar-den had previously been set aside to ac-commodate a new wing for the hospi-tal. It wasn’t anywhere close to beingbuilt, we learned, but the space we wereafter had been spoken for.

Our plan immediately moved to a backburner – at least for the time being.

moving alongIn the time since, Rochester General

Hospital has undergone a great deal ofexpansion. As we watched it happen,wekept after the administration and but-tonholed anyone who would listen to usand our arguments for committing re-sources to a healing garden. Finally, per-sistence paid off – but not in quite the waywe were hoping – when we were asked in2007 to redesign the entire front portionof the hospital grounds, including themain entry off of a busy road.

Wherever we could, we stuck to theprinciples and spirit of healing gardens,largely by designing with plants that aretraditionally used in these settings andby establishing a connection betweenthe hospital’s main waiting room anda new exterior waiting room surround-ed by plantings and a nautilus-shapedstone wall.

The main road entering the hospitalgrounds was flanked by a pair of thesenautilus-inspired walls,each weighing 100tons. Since it was completed, the specialareas we designed into the overall spacehave generated a tremendous volume ofpositive comments from patients and staff– and even from local businesses.

This project finally led to a meeting with

the hospital administrators to discussadding a healing garden specifically foruse by patients, their families and hospi-tal staff. Because of the scope of the pro-ject (and the fact that foundation moneywas being used to fund it), the hospitalwas required to hold a design competi-tion. My firm and three others submit-ted plans.

One of our stipulations for participat-ing in the process was that all of us had topresent plans not only to the engineering

department,which was charged with han-dling the project,but also to a committeemade up of a staff member,a patient liai-son and the maintenance department.

This approach worked: With our ex-perience,we were the only company thataddressed the particular needs of every-one who would be using the garden andas a result our proposal was acceptedwithout much debate – although the hos-pital did require that we work with oneof the other companies (an episode that


n the LevelO

It’s not a large area, but we were able to work with low, radial walls and movable furniture tocreate areas that seem private and self-contained while leaving an open space in the center that’ssuitable for larger groups.

has no bearing here).The process of designing and finally

getting to a point at which our plan wasfinalized bears some discussion. Firstof all, we were never given a budget forthe proposed garden. I like this sort ofprocess, because that nagging “Am I de-signing too much?”bug that lurks in theback of our heads when budgets arearound never infected us. So we werefree to create a space that would be dra-matic, elegant, useful and safe.

We established raised planters for easyaccess by wheelchair- or gurney-boundpatients; private seating areas for intimateconversations; a larger space for gather-ings and official functions (such asfundraising events!); and simple but dra-matic waterfeatures built into a wall toallow people to get their fingers wet. Theplan also included lighting to extend theuse of the space: After all, illness doesn’tknock off when the sun sets.

down to businessWe went back and forth for months

with details of this program, includingbudget development, plant choices andmore – the upshot of one session beingthe elimination of any real water from thegarden. This was (and still is) a sore pointfor me, because most other healing gar-dens around the country include water.(In this case, we ran into an insur-mountable brick wall in the form of thehospital’s infectious-diseases staff.)

Undaunted and at this point gettingready to schedule the construction process,we changed directions and devised fauxwaterfeatures made of copper and glass.My partner Sharon and our colleague AlBroccolo – of Broccolo Tree & Lawn Careof Rochester,N.Y.,with whom we workedon the garden – designed and fabricatedthese distinctly one-of-a-kind sculptures.

With the give and take complete, wewere told to get going with the construc-tion phase in August 2008. And by theway,they asked,do you think you can haveit all done by the end of October? We toldthem that this was unrealistic and let themknow instead that we would scheduletheirs as our very first project of 2009.

The intervening months passed quick-ly,and when March came around,we met

with the hospital to finalize the designand define responsibilities.

Soon thereafter, the hospital took careof removing the existing concrete surfacesand light poles and securing the under-ground utilities in preparation for ourcoming on site to do everything from theconcrete paving, walls and wooden shel-

ters to the lighting and,with our colleaguesat Broccolo Tree & Lawn Care, the plant-ings and any other contractual details.

We informed the hospital that wewould not do anything without a signedcontract and a deposit in hand. Theycountered by asking us to agree to havethe project done by Memorial Day 2009.

www.watershapes.com march 2 0 10 watershapes • 17



Operating under the assumption that,weather permitting, we could be on siteby April 1, we told them yes.

Our goal in all of this was simple: Weaimed to create a space for RochesterGeneral Hospital that could be occupiedby more than one user at a time, withspaces available for solitude and privatecontemplation as well as discussionsamong small groups. As suggested above,the area also had to work for fundraisingevents and use by larger families.

As was noted in my previous columnsabout healing gardens, there’s a lot ofcommon sense involved in the designprocess. In this case, features includedsmooth, glare-free paving surfaces forease of movement (especially for thosetoting I.V. stands) – but not so smooth asto be slippery; small private areas withmovable furniture; some backgroundnoise to mask conversations and provideauditory privacy; raised planters to allowaccess to plants for those sitting in wheel-chairs or reclining on gurneys; areas for

sun and shade; and fragrant plants.In all, the new garden covers a relatively

small space – just 62 by 90 feet – but includessix private terraces,a central gathering space,two wooden shelters with colored steelroofs, three raised planters, a curved seatwall of varying heights (with two “wheel-chair parking”slots), hundreds of plantsand a detailed lighting scheme. Maximumuse of the space is critical given the largescale of the hospital and the potential thespace has to host large numbers of users.

When it was finished,we knew the spacewas exactly what the doctor ordered.

Go to www.watershapes.com/ads

Bruce Zaretsky is president of Zaretsky andAssociates, a landscape design/construc-tion/consultation company in Rochester, N.Y.Nationally recognized for creative and in-spiring residential landscapes, he also workswith healthcare facilities, nursing homes andlocal municipalities in conceiving and installinghealing and meditation gardens. You canreach him at [email protected].

WS

As it turned out, we weren’t able to bring the sound of moving water to the space to add richnessto the experience. But we recognized that suggesting its presence was important and developeda one-of-a-kind sculptural approach in copper and glass to make the impression.

n the LevelO

Currents

2 0 • watershapes march 2 0 10 www.watershapes.com

or more than 10 years now, outdoorrooms have been growing steadily inboth popularity and complexity. That’s

great,because it enables designers – architects,landscape architects, landscape designers andpool builders alike – to bring interiors outsideand provide living spaces where activities pre-viously associated strictly with indoor spacescan move comfortably into the great outdoors.

It’s a fantastic way to expand living areasand create useful spaces while also adding en-tirely new types of experiences to the lives ofhomeowners.

Among this trend’s many implications is thatit has challenged landscape lighting designersto think in all-new ways about how we light ex-terior spaces. For starters,we need to be awarethat many homeowners will enjoy these spacesexclusively after dark – and also be consciousof the fact that these environments requiremuch more complicated lighting schemes thanclassic suburban patios ever did.

The differences are so profound that I believe lighting de-signers need to talk to clients in new ways that take into accountnot only their aesthetic desires but also create an understand-ing of how the lit spaces will be used – for food preparation, forexample, or for dining, lounging, playing games, dancing oreven holding wedding ceremonies.

Accommodating these various activities while still adheringto the basics of aesthetic design, safety and comfort adds lay-ers of complexity to our projects that have rippling effects of de-sign, system layout and installation. It’s challenging, but it canbe great fun as well.

design timeThe vast majority of these spaces are covered by some type of

shade structure, arbor, awning, trellis or pergola, to name a fewpossibilities. While this gives the lighting designer a wonder-ful array of options with respect to fixture placement, those pos-sibilities must all be balanced by consideration of the fact that,unlike traditional landscape lighting, the fixtures in overheadstructures are meant to shine down on people below them.

In addition to decorative lighting,we’re more or less getting our-selves involved in task lighting. What this means, first and fore-most, is that glare is a huge issue – not so much where people arestanding (because they don’t tend to look up), but much moreso when they’re seated: You never want to have light shining downin their eyes as though they’re under a spotlight.

This leads to the first and primary principle of decorative-lighting design for patios – that is, it’s almost always preferableto use indirect lighting. This means you want to light the pil-lars or posts holding up the shade structure; plant materials bor-dering the patio; or the walls of the house or other structures,such as stone fireplaces, sculptures or retaining walls.

This indirect approach enables you to direct light to the sides ofthe gathering spots and thereby avoid most problems with glare.Furthermore,it draws attention to the structures and features thatdefine the boundaries of the patio itself and can make the spaceseem larger. In many respects, this is not unlike landscape light-ing in the way features are lit and remain relatively static: Effectively,they’re either on or off.

Of course, this lighting simply casts a controlled glow over a

Stepping Outside

Outdoor rooms are a fantastic way to expand

living areas and create useful spaces while also

adding entirely new typesof experiences to the lives

of homeowners.

By Mike Gambino

F


defined space. While it may even repre-sent the majority of the lighting,you stillneed to provide lighting within the out-door room to make it suitable for vari-ous activities. By definition, this requiresthe installation of banks of lights con-trolled by switches, sub-switches anddimmers – whatever it takes to illuminateall the uses homeowners envision for theiroutdoor space.

Communication is key: You need toknow the full extent of the homeowners’plans for the space and accommodatetheir thinking to the fullest possible ex-tent. You might, for example,have a needto set up a bank of lights over an outdoorcooking area as well as bright lights ded-icated to a countertop, sink or stove lo-cation – all of which can be turned onwhen the features are in use but alsoturned off individually while the rest ofthe space stays lit.

Barbecues are a special challenge be-cause (unless they’re built in, of course)they can be moved to various locations.In such cases,you may even need to planout multiple cooking areas with separatelycontrolled,relatively bright lights and fo-cused beams that will put light right whereit’s needed.

In the dining area, your approachneeds to be different and should involvethe use of dimmers to allow the home-owners either to read or work in thespace while also enabling them to set themood for intimate dinners. The same istrue of areas adjacent to outdoor fire-places (where people might lounge, re-lax and enjoy conversation in dim lightor need bright light to read by the fire)as well as spaces devoted to outdoorgames or watching television.

personal controlThe design goal throughout these

spaces is to give homeowners as muchcontrol as possible over how the spaceand various areas within it are lit. This isnot generally the case with general land-scape lighting, where the control for theentire array is basically on or off andbrightness is an issue determined onceand for all: With outdoor rooms, yourclients should be able to control not onlywhich lights are on, but also how bright

some of them may be.Brightness is a complicating factor,be-

cause people vary dramatically in whatthey want and what constitutes their per-sonal comfort zones. Some don’t mindtremendously bright light that brings anarea to near-daytime illumination levelsand won’t object to a bit of glare that comesalong with it. There are also those whoprefer very dim lighting to create a distinctambiance – and if they encounter even ahint of glare, they claim to be blinded bythe light.

That’s why the use of dimmers is so im-portant in outdoor rooms: This allowsthe clients to set the lights at levels thatsuit their purposes, depending on com-fort and the needs of the specific activi-ty. If, for example, they’re playing cardsin a dining area, they may want the lightsall the way up to enhance visibility – butfor a quiet dinner the next night over agreat bottle of wine,they may opt for low-er, more romantic lighting levels.

Dimmers make all of these possibilitiesavailable with ease and come in a few dif-ferent forms that lend even further flexi-bility to lighting designs. Primarily,they’re

made for service with either low-voltage(12-volt) or line-voltage (120-volt) sys-tems,with the latter being far more com-mon because the switches are used ex-tensively for indoor applications.

By and large,I prefer working with 120-volt dimmers for outdoor rooms becausethey adjust the power input to a trans-former and therefore can easily be usedto control multiple fixtures. Low-voltagedimmers,which,when you can find them(and it’s not always easy), are good forcontrolling single low-voltage fixtures,areless useful and flexible than their 120-voltcousins.

Also,many of my clients ask these daysfor lighting controllers to run the dimmersand turn various zones or individual lightson or off. So in addition to switch- andwall-mounted dimmers,we have the op-tion to offer clients complete lighting-con-trol systems that allow clients to determinehow the space will be lit by using a hand-held remote.

As you work out the details of these pro-grams, you must also consider safety inthe same way you would in the landscape.Thus, for example, primary steps within

urrentsC


In lighting patio spaces, we will often use an indirect approach and light the trees, plants and struc-tures that surround the space to fill the area with a warm glow. This tends to make these spacesseem larger (which is almost never a bad idea) and also helps avoid problems with glare.

and around the outdoor room must re-ceive the same sort of treatment as dopathways or entryways – that is, they mustalways be clearly lit with no shadows!

Finally, it bears mentioning that whenyou light cooking and dining areas in par-ticular, you need to pay attention to thecolor of the light itself. If the lamps youselect produce light that tends towardsthe “cool” color-temperature end of thespectrum, for example, food will tend tolook blue or green and distinctly unap-petizing. As a rule, you want the lightingover those areas to be “warm” to givethings within the space an inviting look.(And although it’s not necessarily rec-ommended, for outdoor lighting, pinkor rose colored lighting is known to en-hance skin tone in a positive way.)

more to installationsFor the most part, the fixtures in the

lighting schemes for outdoor rooms tendnot to be decorative and instead aremeant to blend in with the overheadstructure.

In other words, in these settings youdon’t want to draw attention to the lightsthemselves because this will cause thehomeowners and their guests to look upand be exposed to sources of glare. Andexcepting situations in which you’re deal-ing with a solid cover of the sort you’dfind inside the home, you won’t be ableto use recessed or countersunk lights andthe fixtures will be exposed.

With all that in mind, we tend to usedark or black fixtures and have fixtureschemically stained or powder coated adark brown to “hide” them within theoverhanging structure. If that structurehappens to be white,we’ll order powder-coated fixtures with white finishes – andthe same goes for exposed conduits orjunction boxes.

Indeed,we do our best to hide both thefixtures and their wiring runs. We installconduit, for example,on top of the shadestructure whenever possible and run itdown the back sides of columns and postswhere they’ll be least visible. We’ll alsorun properly shielded wiring in rain gut-ters and downspouts (a fantastic con-cealment method) while making certain,of course, that we don’t interfere with the

water’s flow. Sometimes hiding powercable this way is not possible, in whichcase we must be creative in our use ofrouters or strategically placed moldingsto conceal things.

With these tight aesthetic boundaries,mounting lights over patios requires agood bit of creativity – and it’s almost al-

ways far more work than is installing stan-dard landscape lighting. In fact,you haveto become part carpenter as well as partelectrician in these situations: up on lad-ders, cutting channels or holes in woodstructures, mounting fixtures any wayyou can to a variety of materials.

We also do all we can to work with



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what the site gives us. Nearby trees mightcome in handy, for example, and we of-ten place fixtures beneath roof overhangsand eaves. Every site is different, but onething we know for sure: With overheadlighting for outdoor rooms,we’re almostinvariably forced to get creative!

That need for improvisation growseven larger when the outdoor spacesyou’re lighting have no overhanging cov-er. Here, it all boils down to exploitingwhatever opportunities the site has to of-fer: nearby trees, adjacent fences andwalls, distant structures. On occasions,we’ve even had to use streetlamp-stylelighting – a last resort in my book becausethey can look tacky, draw too much at-tention and are an immediate and un-avoidable source of glare.

(I also have a problem with lights mount-ed in the room’s floor. Sometimes they’rethe only possible design solution, but un-less you can make them completely flush,they become a trip hazard in addition togetting hot.)

Finally, there are instances wherehomeowners will insist on using decora-tive fixtures, which often happens whenan interior designer is in the loop andwants to make a statement by bringingan indoor-style feature to the great out-doors. For all my resistance, I have toagree that the right chandelier can be abeautiful addition to an outdoor diningarea, but in such cases I insist on the fix-ture being safe and fully intended for out-door use.

open dialogueAs mentioned at the outset, the light-

ing of outdoor rooms offers the land-scape lighting designer wonderful op-portunities to get creative. At the sametime, it also brings a lot of responsibili-ty, basically because the element of hu-man interaction comes into play on somany levels.

Bottom line: You need to learn tocommunicate with clients in slightly dif-ferent (and certainly more accommo-

urrentsC


However an outdoor room is illuminated, we do what we can to minimize the fixtures’ presence by day without compromising nighttime performance.This often means finding fixtures that match the surrounding structure’s colors, or powder-coating them to make them blend in. Alternatively, it meanshiding fixtures within the structure to make them as visually unobtrusive as possible.

dating) ways. When lighting trees andstructures in the landscape, clients willhave their preferences, but to a large ex-tent, you make the calls. On a patio orin an outdoor room, by contrast, theclient tends to be more involved in thedecision-making process and you needto do a lot more to accommodate theirpreferences, likes and dislikes.

To be sure, there have been instanceswhere I’ve suggested and then donethings about which clients were initial-ly hesitant but came subsequently to ap-preciate and enjoy. I’ve also had clientsreact negatively and insist on adjust-ment – at my expense, naturally. Thisis why I do everything I can to make cer-tain we’re always on the same page andthat I know how they plan to use thespace. It’s also why I use lots of dim-mers and build as much flexibility into

these systems as possible!As I see it, these projects are about as

fun as it gets in lighting design: Theylet me take what clients tell me theywant and need and use my knowledgeof the effects I can achieve to exceedtheir wildest expectations – the best ofall possible situations.

march 2 0 10 watershapes • 2 5www.watershapes.com


I’m not a huge fan of using fixtures to makebold statements, but in some cases a pendantor chandelier can be the right choice so longas it’s truly suited to outdoor use and is set upon a dimmer so the light can be adjusted to suitthe need as well as the mood.

WS

Mike Gambino owns and operates GambinoLandscape Lighting of Simi Valley, Calif. A li-censed lighting contractor since 1990, he hasspecialized since 1995 on high-performancelow-voltage systems. He may be reached viahis Web site: www.gambinolighting.com.

When watershaper and landscape artist Anthony Archer Wills

was asked to develop a pond/stream system for this historic

Midwest estate, he saw an opportunity to redefine the scene

to befit the grand and glorious setting. Here, in the first of

three features on this project, he describes the early stages

of his work and a design meant to bring beautiful views and

wonderful sounds to spaces dedicated both to children at play

and adult delight.

Historic

Perspectives


By Anthony Archer Wills

There’s something truly wonderfulabout working on properties that are inone way or another historic: In a veryreal sense, they give you a rare opportu-nity to participate in the past while at thesame time you are conceiving and form-ing a place for the future.

This project is a case in point: Myendeavors here gave me the chance toenhance a truly splendid 1905 privatehome in the upper Midwest and com-plement its amazing Palladian/GreekRevival-style bone structure with a

SETTING THE SCENE

The mansion faces a lakefront to thesouth and is backed by approximately35 acres of mostly forested land. To thefront of the home is a lawn that coversan expanse running from 300 to 400feet down to the lakeshore and a pri-vate dock. The site rises gently from thewater’s edge, eventually reaching ma-ture oaks, maples and other assortedspecies that have been there for 100years or more.

It is truly a noble setting, and fortu-

contemporary composition in rock,plant material and water.

The owner, who has a passion for ar-chitecture and historic preservation,hadalready completed a total restoration ofthe buildings. The grounds, however,still left much to be desired. The prop-erty manager had worked with me on aprevious project, and he suggested thatI should be brought in to revitalize thespace – the centerpiece of which wouldturn out to be a grand system of ponds,streams and waterfalls.


nately, the new owner had the architec-tural knowledge and enthusiasm to re-store the entire estate to all of its origi-nal grandeur.

I was called in initially to address theproperty’s rather scruffy little pond – athing that did not do justice to its sur-roundings. It was extremely small andsat at the bottom of steep banks, so thewater was invisible from the house andonly discernible when you were almoston top of it. One was made aware of itspresence only by an ornate fountainspray that rose above the banks and thebeds of waterside plants. Aesthetically,none of this worked well, and the pondalways seemed half empty.

I have always disliked the look of half-empty ponds: They remind me vividlyof the bomb craters that used to dot thecountryside where I grew up in southernEngland in the 1950s. Out in the fields,I’d encounter these random holes,which

often were partially filled with water,anddisliked them because they looked so un-natural and alien to the landscape. (Thisis probably why, to this day, I’m such anadvocate of brimming water.)

Eventually, of course, those country-side craters were filled in and erasedfrom the landscape, and that’s exactlythe fate I intended for this pond. Indeed,in my very first discussion with the clientand the property manager, I suggestedthat the existing watershape was thor-oughly inadequate and that it would bebest simply to wipe the slate clean andstart again.

They agreed, and over the course ofmany subsequent conversations markedby their willingness to allow me a greatdegree of creative freedom,we went rightto work in designing the overall scheme.

Through the years, I’ve spent a con-siderable amount of time refining my ap-proach to such tasks. I lack a formal de-

sign education, but I’ve spent a lifetimespeaking with and very carefully listen-ing to people I admire, aligning what Ilearn from them with my own informalstudies of great artists and various designtraditions and, more particularly, withwhat I’ve observed in the grand and won-derful laboratories of nature.

In essence,what I’ve determined is thatin approaching any design task – whetherit’s an expansive one such as this or oneon a far more modest scale – I must con-sider the entirety of the setting. I won’t,in other words, just drop in a pond orstream without considering the wholeproperty and its larger context: how itworks,how one moves through the space,where the views are (both within and be-yond the property lines) and where sun-light and shade make their presences felt.Moreover,I do all I can to understand theclients and how they live and will use thespaces I’m developing for them.


This is the property as it appeared before construction began, complete with an existing pond that couldn’t be detected from the house other thanas a fountain spray rising awkwardly from the lawn. As can be seen here, the slope rises very slightly and gradually through much of the deepavailable space, with a distinct grade change occurring mainly in the upper third of the space.

TAME AND WILD

As I see it, I simply cannot leave anyof these influential elements out of theprocess or I will invariably miss oppor-tunities to forge the visual and emotionalconnections that will make these spaceswork at their best for my clients and theirguests.

In this case, as an example, when thehomes in the area were first built, nonewere accessed by road; instead, residentsand guests arrived at the local town byrail and were met by a steam yacht thatcarried them to the estates’private docks.The result of this arrangement is that allhomes on the waterfront were orient-ed to relate to the lake rather than to anysort of street.

By extension, this meant that theseproperties became wilder as one trav-eled uphill away from the shore and intothe woods. This history directly in-formed the design: The planned water-

shapes were to emerge from the wood-land in a naturalistic, discreet fashionand increase in splendor before termi-nating in a large pond adjacent to thehome. Here,near this structure, the edgetreatment was to be controlled and dis-ciplined. Farther away, it would transi-tion to a much more natural appearanceand be marked by a series of waterfallsand wild plantings

Things would get increasingly wild asthe system marched up the hill into thewoods – the overall impression from thehouse being that you’re standing next toa long-tamed portion of an entirely nat-ural water system that works its way downfrom the forest above to civilized spacesaround the home and near the lake.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myselfhere in offering an overview of the de-sign solution that emerged: Before Igo any further, let’s double back andtake a look at the fantastic canvas this

project offered me.The overall space is quite large: ap-

proximately 600 feet wide and about3,000 feet deep. Within that swath of land,I took my first steps by laying out in mymind what would ultimately becomethree major ponds connected by complexsystems of waterfalls and streams.

As is almost always the case, there weresome obstacles in the way – includingthe fact that,despite the lot’s size and lo-cation, the space is relatively flat. Fromtop to bottom, although we were work-ing with some 40 feet in vertical transi-tion,almost all of it took place in the up-per third of the space.

That might seem like a big drop – andindeed would be in another setting – butwhen cast over a space so large and withso much of the rise concentrated in onearea, it’s really not so grand as all that. Infact, for the majority of the space theslope rose no more than about four feet,


As the design process movesalong, I generate all sorts ofdrawings as a means of con-ducting my own dialogue withthe site but also to draw clientsand other members of the de-sign team into the conversationas well. Here, for example, isa general concept drawing thatgives everyone an overview:It’s far from literal and even far-ther from being set in stone,but it introduces them to mytrains of thought.

so I had to be unusually creative and verydeliberate in planning transitions tomake the most of what we had at hand.

This slope issue was exacerbated bya second challenge presented by the site’smature trees. In one spot along the low-er portion of the proposed system, forexample, stands an oak that is proba-bly more than 200 years old. It riseswithin reach of the stream course, withthe crown of its root ball determiningthe top of the grade.

MAKING DO

What this meant, of course, is that wehad to work very carefully around theseobstacles to make certain we wouldn’tcause any damage – and,in fact,would suc-ceed in creating the illusion that the treehad grown up alongside the water’s edge.

The same issue we had confrontedwith that one beautiful oak came up timeand again as we laid out our systems andwere steadily challenged by the need togive priority to preserving the old trees.The only ones we could actually removewere either sick or damaged or com-promised in some way, but those re-movals were few and far between. As a

result, we were left to snake our wayamong many healthy, well-presentedspecimens to establish our watercours-es. In so doing, I worked scrupulouslybeyond the trees’drip lines to avoid anyincidental damage in the here and nowthat might result in major harm later on.

On the plus side, this work gave usmany chances to place the beautiful treeson promontories and at bends of thestreams, giving these particular speci-mens the appearance of having takenroot opportunistically in available landadjacent to the water.

Another challenge we faced had to dowith the fact that the existing landscapewas utterly devoid of natural geologicalformations and offered no visible rockoutcroppings of any kind to work with.This meant that, for one thing,we’d haveto bring in all the rock material to coverthe entire job. It also meant that we’d haveto extend those formations well into thelandscape beyond the water to generatethe impression that the water had beenresponsible for exposing the formations.

These were,of course,specific installa-tion details I wouldn’t be dealing with di-rectly until we were well under way on

site – and I won’t be discussing them toany further extent until we publish thenext article in this series. Just the same,I know that I must consider such detailsfrom the start and anticipate what they’llinvolve so I can accommodate their needs.Indeed, all elements must be consideredat the planning stages to avoid problemsand extra costs in the future: It’s aboutmuch more than figuring out the extentof the rockwork!

Early in the design phase, we also es-tablished that we would be dealing withlarge ponds and streams to suit the scaleof the property, and that everythingwould appear to be flowing down theslope toward the lake (an appearancediscussed in additional detail in the side-bar on page 31).

The house itself sits at the very bottomof the water system,in front of the largestof the three big ponds. To create intimatebonds among the formal gardens sur-rounding the home, the bottom pondends in a crisp, formal,near-circular edgeand acts as a mirror for the mansion’sbeautiful architecture. As suggested pre-viously, the idea was to make it look asthough the water predated the home and


When it comes to key details, a design willgo through many iterations and variationsas we move along. Here, for example, aretwo basic concepts for the water system’sheadwaters, one in which the flow emergesfrom the slope as a natural spring, the oth-er in which it rises (in formal and more rus-tic versions) from a font set in a grotto struc-ture beneath the road.

that only portions of the system had beentamed for human occupation.

Another detail supporting this narra-tive is the beautiful limestone culvertplaced near the top of the system wherea road crosses the stream’s path. The ideahere is that, when roads were eventuallyinserted around the lake to accommodateautomobiles, this arched span had to bebuilt to pass over an existing watercourse.

Now,as you enter the property by car,you first encounter the water as a verysmall stream up near the top of the driveand then see it at various points along theroute. The impression given is that thesystem grows naturally in volume as itmoves down the watershed.

FUN AND GAMES

As an overlay for this narrative, theowners made it clear from the start thatthey also wanted the project to includemajor elements of whimsy and play:The family includes young children,andthe owners saw the pond and stream areaas a place to encourage exploration andprovide instructive entertainment.

This led us to decide that, as part ofthe waterfall structure at the lower part

of the system (quite close to the house),we would include a cave for the kids,withapertures through which they could peekout while hiding.

I’ll stay away from construction de-tails at this point; for now, suffice it tosay that, in designing with children inmind,provision of hiding places and se-cure observation points is the key to

making these areas as much fun as theycan be. Here,we devised a structure thatcould be accessed through a waterfall onthe wet side and also by way of a smallpath running through an escarpmenton the dry side.

This attention to the recreational needsof growing children was also a design fo-cus beyond the cave system. Indeed, a


Natural Connection

As mentioned in the accompanying text, one of the fundamental design conceptsin this project involves creating illusory connections between our pond/stream systemand the natural lake that fronts the property.

We didn’t want to disturb the beautiful expanse of lawn between the house and theshore, so we agreed that the impression would simply be that the water in the pondsand streams flows to the lake via some hidden subsurface means – not an uncommonscenario in natural systems in the surrounding area.

That concept, however, assumes a great deal: We knew we’d be asking observersto make the connection on their own – and although that’s not an unreasonable stretchof the imagination, I offered the thought that, at some point, we might further enhancethe landscape (and the illusion of a connection between our water system and the lake)by inserting some sort of culvert structure near the lake.

– A.A.W.

good deal of attention was paid through-out the composition to establishing areaswhere children would be encouraged tointeract with the environment.

This is why the design includes all sortsof pathways and turns and visual surprisesand places to interact with the water.There’s also a raised, wooden walkwaythat crosses a portion of the stream neara waterfall and a number of places wherethe water may be crossed via stepping-stones: These vantage points allow thefamily and their guests to interact inti-mately with the aquatic flora and fauna.

We didn’t entirely surrender the spaceto children,of course,but we applied thesame spirit in mirroring the children’scave upstream in the form of a cave be-hind the system’s highest waterfall madefor adult use: We included hollows andhidden places behind the rocks, know-ing that these details would appeal to theinner child in everyone who movedthrough the garden.

After many visits to the site and lots ofconversations with the owners and theproperty manager – and with all of theseconcepts very much in mind – my nextstep involved walking the site and estab-lishing boundaries for the water and var-ious other features with ribbons and stakes.This took a while as I located and relocat-ed the outlines of the ponds and streams.

The property manager and home-owners were extremely helpful in whatturned out to be several rounds of re-vising and editing – which brings up animportant point: I believe that the bestdesigners constantly revisit ideas to besure they’re the best they possibly can be.Yes, sometimes an original kernel willpersist from start to finish,but often thebest solution for a given space can onlybe found by testing and retesting vari-ous ideas.

I might, for example, revisit a portionof a stream course and decide that partof the contour is gratuitous and needsto be toned down,or,by contrast, I mightsee that I need to play up a certain con-tour to create a sense of a natural battlebetween the water and the land’s edge.It is in striking these balances and defin-ing these relationships that I invest a greatdeal of my time as a designer.


In addition to sketches that are purely part of the creative process, I also generatedrawings that serve as a guide for installation, helping the construction side of theteam understand how everything will eventually come together on site.

DOWN TO PRACTICALITIES

With the basic layout in place, it wastime to plan the site’s basic structuralelements (especially the waterfall/tran-sition areas, all of which would have tobe supported by structural concrete) aswell as the hydraulic systems requiredto drive a truly massive watercourse. Inthe latter case, not only did we need toconsider performance and aesthetics,but also had to factor in efficiency inoperating costs and take an aggressiveapproach to keeping a lid on energyconsumption.

On both fronts, I drew tremendoussupport from my frequent collaborator,David Duensing (David B. Duensing &Associates,Ponte Vedre Beach,Fla.),whoalways does an amazing job with issuessuch as plumbing and pump sizing andother technical aspects of the work.

His team was to handle the complex-ities of installing and jointing all of thepond-lining material as well as con-necting the pipes and pumps. He wouldalso work closely with the property man-ager, who had at one time specialized inlarge electrical and hydraulic systems.The result of their collaboration is a sys-tem that moves lots of water while us-ing many low-horsepower pumps andlittle electricity.

Indeed, the success of any project onthis scale depends on the team – and inthis case we had a winning combination:a forward-thinking,enthusiastic owner;a property manager who could makethings happen and knew how to uncloglogjams; efficient and professional earth-moving and general contractors; theaforementioned Mr.Duensing; and a de-lightful and supportive general staff.

I used the team to the fullest, estab-lishing a portion of the design that theywould either approve or offer sugges-tions of how things might be improved.Through it all, I generated countlesshand drawings to help everyone involvedvisualize the details – edge treatments,water flows, plants – and keep all of uson the same general page.

The process here was delightful. Theonly difficulty, in fact,had to do with thelocal preservation and historical society,which maintains strict standards and feltthe need to review every detail to see that


As concepts coalesce into plans, the drawings get more specific but not necessarily moredetailed. Although we will indeed use these images as something of a guide once con-struction begins, there’s a great deal of improvisation on site – and participation by theentire crew in achieving the atmosphere suggested by the artwork.

we were observing the rules to the letter– all understandable when a project in-volves changing a significant historicproperty. Happily, the vast majority ofwhat we wanted to do was eventually ac-cepted, the only real burden being thetime added to the process while we ob-tained necessary approvals.

All told, in fact, these meetings and de-liberations added a good six months tothe process. The fallout of the delays wasthat,by the time we were ready to go,ourwindow of opportunity had narrowedquite a bit,basically because of the weath-er. Our first phase – in which we were tobuild the bottom and middle ponds andtheir associated waterfalls – was com-pressed into little more than two monthsfollowing the end of the winter and lead-ing up to an important garden party.

Following that event, we returned for

Phase Two and added the third pondalong with the system’s biofiltration sys-tem. Above that level, we built the tallwaterfall and its cave. Here, too,we faceda deadline in the form of another ap-proaching winter.

In Phase Three, begun after winter’sretreat, we finished the cave and sur-mounted it with a pair of streams, oneof which emerges gently out of stoneoutcrops we placed in the woods, theother of which issues from a limestoneculvert – both convincing ways of giv-ing the impression that water is enteringthe property from a watercourse hiddenabove. Having completed that, we ad-dressed the landscape areas adjacent tothe ponds and streams.

More on all of this construction ac-tivity will need to wait for the second ar-ticle in this series.


All of this creative energy was a prelude to alot of hard work on site in which we wouldultimately insert huge volumes of water wherethere had been none; work around existingtrees while making them key components inthe composition; create vertical transitions inwhat is basically a flat terrain; and introducegeology to a space devoid of it. All, as theysay, in a day’s work.


verything about this project was classic and beautiful. Forone thing, the home has the soft look of a French countrychateau. For another, it’s located in Hancock Park, one of theoldest of Los Angeles’upscale downtown neighborhoods. Andwhen you add in the fact that it sits on a half-acre-plus lot ona quiet street, we had the pleasing sense that we’d landed on arefreshing oasis at the heart of a bustling metropolis.

We also enjoyed the privilege of working here with AndresCardenes, a wonderful architect who had collaborated withthese clients on and off for several years. In their latest endeavor,he had come in to refurbish the home along historic and for-mal lines – something that often happens in this neighborhood,which boasts numerous restored and beautifully maintainedhomes across a range of architectural styles.

Our firm, New Leaf Landscape of Agoura Hills, Calif., hadworked with Cardenes on previous projects. When he called,he talked a bit about the situation and let us know that hethought we’d be a great fit because of the way we draw inspi-ration from both the clients and the site. When we met withthe clients, they liked us and what we had to say and we weresoon hired to move forward with the landscape.

FITTING THE CANVASInitially, we’d been asked to handle only the backyard, but as

often happens when things go well, before long we became in-volved out front as well. In fact, before we ever put shovels tosoil, things had advanced to the point where the clients gave uscarte blanche, back and front.

There were,however, two major exceptions to what we coulddo: First, we had to work with an existing driveway that ranalong the north end of the property past the side of the housebefore cutting across the backyard north to south – right throughthe middle of the space. Second, we couldn’t touch a magnif-icent Magnolia that had ruled the backyard for at least 100 years.

Inside the home, Cardenes was doing truly lovely work –restoring the original charm of the kitchen, adding a wine cel-lar and, most prominently, placing a new conservatory at theback of the house. It was this last item that prompted the ar-chitect and his clients to think seriously about the backyard be-cause of the way the glass structure commanded significant ex-terior views.

Initially, the clients and the architect had envisioned either alarge swimming pool or some other type of upsized watershapefor the backyard. I worked with that idea for a time, generat-ing several design concepts and plunging into a lengthy processof sorting through various ideas that ultimately would becometheir backyard.

As we worked, it became mostly a process of taking big con-cepts and editing and whittling them down to more suitableforms. Cardenes, for example, started out as an advocate fora broad, truly dramatic swimming pool. As I saw it, this con-flicted with the clients’ basic conviction that they wanted theproperty to look pretty much the way it might have looked 100years ago.

After more back and forth, I countered with a suggestion thatwe should think in terms of a simpler garden oasis. This would

GracefulTransformationsMany watershape and landscape designers will attest to the fact that their bestprojects are those where no one element stands out among the rest; instead, theentire exterior composition is a balanced integration of beautiful materials andwell-chosen features. Take the property shown here as a case in point, suggestsColleen Holmes, who transformed the grounds of a stately home in a historic LosAngeles neighborhood into a space of remarkably subtle beauty.

E By Colleen Holmes

www.watershapes.com march 2 0 10 watershapes • 37

be a space marked by layered views, tex-tures and colors – all enhanced by thesound of water flowing in smaller scalewatershapes. And of course everythingout back would be visible from the con-servatory, which was to be surroundedby and effectively become part of the ex-terior space.

With that spirit of historic revision inmind, my thinking about the propertyopened up and I began seeing everythingin a new light. The backyard, for exam-ple, was hemmed in by a huge expanseof privacy hedging on the north side –definitely useful, but it was at that pointa mishmash of unsightly, messy plants.Without my saying a word, the clientssaid that they wanted all that materialremoved to create an open,brighter feel-ing that would be more in step with thehome’s country-chateau design.

I agreed wholeheartedly, so one of thefirst things we did on site was rip out allthat material and replace the worn, uglyperimeter walls with beautifully crafted,stone-capped walls that have been expertlyfinished in stucco to look as though they’dbeen there for decades.

TAKING A DRIVEThe next major detail we dealt with –

the driveway – was not so easily resolved.With old homes such as this, it’s not

unusual to see driveways passing into thebackyard through some sort of porte-cochère. It is, however, unusual to havethe driveway then turn and cut a promi-nent path all the way across the entire backportion of the property as it approachedthe garage. That structure was there tostay, so we had to find a way to contendwith the driveway on an aesthetic if not apractical basis.

My solution included removing theoriginal driveway, starting over and de-vising a “garden drive” stretching some800 feet from the porte-cochère, throughthe yard and over to the garage. Startingat the street,we placed diamond-shaped,washed-aggregate pads spaced severalinches apart,adding grass and other plantsto superimpose the garden’s aestheticpresence on the driveway’s main, func-tional appearance.

Beneath the porte-cochère – a spectac-ular structure on its own – we added

stones to make for a more solid surfaceand to signal that this was the place tounload passengers or groceries. Past thispoint,we picked up the diamond patternagain, carrying it though the backyarduntil the driveway reached a final turn atthe very back of the property and enteredthe garage. (This driveway had criticalviewpoints that happened to fall on themain axial line from the conservatory.)

As a backdrop to that axial view fromthe conservatory,we placed a small, art-ful waterfeature (to be described below)with a deck made of pavers cast from thestones of a French castle in front of it.We also used this material to pave thesection of the driveway adjoining the

deck,but this time we used an ashlar pat-tern that blends in with the adjacentspa/fireplace patio. We then reverted tothe diamond pattern as the drivewaycontinued toward the garage, allowingthe area around the waterfeature to be-come a visual extension of the drivewaywhile also making the driveway part ofthe garden.

When we finished,everyone breatheda collective sigh of relief: This new treat-ment took what was probably the mostawkward component of the landscapeand turned it into a beautiful comple-ment to the home and its surroundings.

That same integrative sensibility wascrucial to the rest of the process that now


The owners had done a great deal to increase the architectural charm of their French countrychateau, especially with the key addition of the conservatory that now overlooks the backyard.But when I came on site, the exterior spaces left a lot to be desired, including the intrusively mono-lithic driveway and perimeter plantings that needed to be completely revised.

unfolded before us: It was our missionto make all of the various elements ofthe backyard work together visually andharmonize thematically with the home’sarchitecture, doing all we could to alignour thinking with the clients’ wish list.

Happily, there was nothing unex-pected on their list: They wanted placesto relax in the midst of a beguiling, wel-coming garden; they wanted spaceswhere they could entertain up to 30guests; and they wanted a comfortablespa as well as a fire feature – all easily ac-commodated within the available space.

ROMANCING THE STONEOne of the quirkiest challenges we en-

countered in the project had to do withthe stone that had been used in the home’soriginal construction. Large sections hadbeen faced with a beautiful yellowish-graystone we wanted to use elsewhere in thespace,but we soon discovered that noth-ing similar was being quarried anywherein the country and didn’t seem to be avail-able by any means from any source.

So immediately, we had to come upwith something different that would stillbe similar enough that the untrained eyewouldn’t notice. We searched diligent-ly among the many stone yards in the re-gion before finally procuring a materialwe thought would work – and happily,it did. That was a good thing indeed,be-cause the plans called for using it on theperimeter walls of the property as wellas the outdoor fireplace, the raised spaand series of low planters that were toflank portions of the driveway.

The tale of the stone brings up an im-portant point about the guiding princi-ples of a design such as this: We were sointent on finding a close match for thestone used on the house because wewanted to use it throughout the site as arecurring,unifying, integrating visual el-


We did a lot of work with stone, plants and abit of water in the front yard, doing what it tookto lend a sense of antiquity to the approach tothe door. The keys here are the weatheredstones we used for the revised walkway aswell as the addition of an antique livestocktrough and trickling waterspout to a space ad-jacent to the porch.

ement. We did so firm in the belief thatthe best designs offer connections andbalances among hardscape, plantingsand other design features.

With the hardscape issues settled atlast, we were able to focus our attentionon plant selection,bringing in a wide va-riety of plants that might be found in aclassic European garden. The key wassetting up layered views with changes intextures and colors – all organized so thespaces were visually fused and no singleelement came to dominate the view.

We had an advantage here in thatplants are our point of greatest expertiseand my crews are well-seasoned profes-sionals who work expertly with my staffand I during garden installations. Weknow all about plant spacing and growthpatterns and position each individualplant in a way that those in the fore-ground won’t block awareness of what

lay beyond – a sort of deliberate layer-ing that gives garden spaces an invitingsense of depth and complexity. This,webelieve, is the sort of impression thatpulls people into the space where theycan discover its full extent and exploreits mysteries.

Another edge we have is that we han-dle both design and installation. Thisgives us the opportunity to work physi-cally within the space rather than sim-ply creating a plan view and moving on:We’ve always believed that understand-ing the installation process ultimatelyimproves the work we start by develop-ing a design.

In this case, the entire aim of that de-sign was to provide a sense that the land-scape had been there for years and hadmatured gracefully along with the home.In my opinion, this particular house isone of the prettiest on a street filled by

lovely homes and therefore deserved topresent itself with a well-dressed, evenregal sense of sophistication – beginning,of course, with the front yard.

MANAGING TRANSITIONSAs was mentioned above, the clients’

appreciation of what we were doing inthe back yard is what led them to askus to work on the front yard as well. Inso doing, we respected what was therewhen it came to placements,but as we’ddone with the driveway,we replaced de-tails such as the walkway with weatheredstones that lent a sense of antiquity tothe main approach to the front door.

We supported that temporal transfor-mation by installing a waterfeature onthe front porch made with a trough thathad been used to water livestock in theFrench Pyrenees hundreds of years ago.

Using the neighborhood’s existing,


purple-flowered Jacarandas as a point ofdeparture, we planted brightly coloredcamellias, hydrangeas and gardenias inthe front yard. We also installed a sec-ondary decomposed-granite path alongthe side of the house, bringing passers-by into close contact with the fragrantplants and encouraging them to appre-ciate some of the home’s finer architec-tural details. In addition,we planted an-tique climbing roses to crawl up thestone face of the house and the small re-taining walls we’d built from reclaimedmaterial.

As you walk through the shade of theporte-cochère and enter the backyard,you pass through a small space dark-ened by ivy before the backyard unfolds.Alternatively, the yard is approached viaa door off to the side of the solarium– another space we shaded with hang-ing vines and other plants to create asense of entering a new and specialspace beyond.

To the right of this door is a stone-cladoutdoor fireplace with an associateddeck/gathering place. To the left is araised circular spa that provides views ofthe gardens beyond.

As mentioned above, while you’re inthe solarium, you look through all ofthe spaces we’ve established to the veryback of the property, where we posi-tioned an intriguing,weeping stone wallthat features a mask of Ariadne (com-panion of Bacchus the wine god andherself the goddess of ancient Crete)with a spout pouring into an antiquebathtub.

This back area has a lawn and includesa cupola the owners had in storage. Theperimeter (where the privacy hedges hadbeen) was planted with sporadicallyspaced Italian Cypresses punctuated bybutter-yellow roses we set in the gaps.The walls themselves are finished with adistressed, soft-yellow plaster and havebeen capped with pieces of the stone weused throughout the landscape.

SMALL WATERSAs was mentioned above, initial think-

ing about the backyard included a swim-ming pool, but when all was said anddone we followed a more restrained pathand went with three small watershapes:


Our principle challenge with the project was to minimize the visual intrusiveness of the old, mono-lithic driveway. We did this by replacing the original slab with a diamond pattern we carried allthe way through the property and back to the garage with two key interruptions – one for the sur-face of the porte-cochère, the other for an extension of the patio space.

the all-tile circular spa, the antiquetrough near the front door and the weep-ing wall featuring Ariadne.

As we collectively came to see it, theserelatively modest watershapes do morefor the space than a large, static poolwould have, introducing the sounds ofmoving water,providing distinct,remotedestinations within the landscape andgiving us a means of bringing sculptur-al elements into the space.

The spa is truly elegant: a raised, cir-cular vessel clad inside with a beautifulporcelain-tile mosaic marked by promi-nent olive greens and buttery yellows.Its stone-clad wall rises beneath a trel-lis with hanging grapevines – an area thatfeels very private but is also well-suitedfor socializing. The fact that it’s raisednot only gives bathers and non-bathersa place to sit,but also offers advantageousviews of the garden.

We located the spa’s equipment about75 feet away on the far side of the drive-way in an area enclosed by an intriguingwood-and-metal gate. This way, insteadof looking to all the world like a utilityarea, we’ve created another destination.

Of the three watershapes, the most un-usual is the weeping-wall/tub combina-tion at the back of the property. As men-tioned previously, it features a mask ofAriadne mounted on an ancient-look-ing stone surface. Water issues from themouth of the goddess; it also weepsthrough the rough-hewn stones, whichwe’ve left to collect moss that contributesto the aged appearance.

The story of the acquisition of this wa-terfeature’s copper tub bears mention: Ifound it way in the back of an antiquesstore on Melrose, a street in Los Angelesknown for such establishments,and theowner was an old codger who reallydidn’t want to sell it to me. (He declaredthat it had originally been owned byEsther Williams: I have no way of know-ing if that was true or not,but in any case,he would not budge.)

It was perfect for what we wanted,how-ever,so I made my case and ended up beg-ging him to reconsider. I finally left himmy card and walked away,but I kept afterhim with repeated phone calls until he fi-nally relented and named a price. I visit-ed his shop with the clients,who fell in love


The glass-wrapped conservatory was the key architectural addition to the home and became thekey focal point we used in organizing the backyard space. Directly opposite, we placed an out-door room that includes a large fireplace. Just behind it, we set a raised spa that now offers su-perb views of the gardens beyond.

with the tub and acquired it on the spot.The piece was so beautiful that it war-

ranted a great setting, and the weepingwall was the result. When I subsequentlyfound the Ariadne mask and suggestedadding it to the composition, I knew wehad it made.

STRIKE UP THE BANDThe story of this project ends on a

wonderful and truly unusual note.From the start, we knew we had to

complete our work in time for the cel-ebration of his parents’ 50th weddinganniversary. We were all for meeting thatgoal, and as we came to know the clientsand came to appreciate the fact that theywere fun,kind-hearted people with fan-tastic creative spirits,we were even moreintent on doing all we could to let them

start enjoying their refurbished proper-ty well before the deadline passed.

We’d wrapped up our work in thefront yard and applied finishing touch-es out back with days to spare, leavingplenty of time for party preparations. Onthe big day and as a surprise for her fa-ther, they had obtained the permits re-quired to close off the block to traffic andsomehow managed to hire the Universityof Southern California’s famous march-ing band to come down the street andstop in front of the house, where theyperformed to everyone’s delight andamazement.

To all of us who were involved in thiswonderful project, this seemed like theperfect exclamation point to close offwhat turned out to be one of the mostenjoyable jobs we’ve ever done.


Toward the back of the property, we estab-lished a key focal point in the form of a weep-ing-wall composition that features a mask ofthe Greek goddess Ariadne that shoots waterinto an old copper tub – a great way to sum-marize the sense of antiquity we wanted tobring to the outdoor spaces.

44 • watershapes march 2 0 10

Straightand

NarrowBy Joan Roca

The Pacific coast of northern Costa Rica islined with white sand beaches and densevegetation – beautiful surroundings that wa-tershaper Joan Roca has long used to in-spire his work. Here, he takes us to visit oneof his most recent projects, this one for acommercial property with requirements thatcalled on Roca to find ways of expressinghimself and draw on the character of thesurroundings while using only the simplestpossible forms.

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With watershapes, sometimes themost straightforward forms work outbest. That was definitely the case withthis project,a swimming pool I designedand built for a beach club near my homein Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

The club is part of an overall resortproperty known as Reserva Conchal, anutterly spectacular spread covering 2,500acres on scenic Playa Conchal on ourcountry’s north Pacific coast.

I first became involved with the re-sort’s owners about ten years ago, whenthey were completing their first phaseand I helped them solve some problemswith a pool that had been built by an-other firm. Since then, as the owners’master plan has gradually unfolded, I’veworked with them on a number of poolsin various spots around the huge prop-erty, including watershapes for variouscondominiums and other facilities.

My involvement with their newly con-structed club has been, by far, the moststimulating collaboration I’ve enjoyedwith these clients to date.

A Complete SceneThe beach club was intended to pro-

vide a range of luxurious amenities for

the property’s condominium residents,including a bar/restaurant,a fitness cen-ter, meeting rooms, locker rooms, in-door spa and sauna facilities and, ofcourse,a beautiful outdoor pool that wasto rise above a pristine stretch of beach.

The resort’s project director calledme in for a meeting with the architect,who at the time was still in the initialstages of developing the club’s overalldesign. Right away, the architect toldme that he wanted the pool to be verylinear – nothing even remotely natu-ralistic or curvilinear. No visual adorn-ments at all, in fact: just a clean, straight,rectangular pool.

Although the rigidity of that directionseemed limiting and unimaginative tome at the time, as I familiarized myselfwith what he was after, it made perfectsense: The architecture of the beach clubwas going to reflect exactly that sort oflinear value – very contemporary in stylewith compelling sets of straight lines.

I knew from my years of experienceand especially from my study of designprinciples and traditions through Genesis3 that simple rectangles have resulted insome of the most beautiful swimmingpools ever created – if, of course, they’re

used in the right setting and in the rightway. You don’t need to think much pastthe Taj Mahal, the reflecting pool on theCapitol Mall in Washington, D.C., ormany of the pools designed and built byFrank Lloyd Wright to find examples ofthis point.

Still, this was to be a resort pool, so Iknew that I had to “think inside the box”(literally) and create various zones fordifferent activities and provide the largespace with different points of interest.With that in mind, I set out to see whatI could do with a rectangle to make it asinteresting as possible.

The pool runs parallel to the beach atthe center of a long, narrow deck areapositioned between the beach club’smain building and the sand. It’s almost220 feet long and about 22 feet wide,es-sentially a long and very skinny channelabutted by shade structures,cabanas andscores of lounge chairs.

I decided to use the extreme length tomy advantage by dividing the pool intothree sections: a beach entrance andshallow play area (about 72 feet long anddropping to a depth of four feet); an 82-foot-long lap-swimming area (with adepth from five to five-and-a-half feet);


We use masonry blocks to build pool walls in Costa Rica, basically because there’s not enough local work of this sort to support a shotcrete-appli-cation company. While it’s a different approach, it involves familiar processes as we excavate, prepare the steel cage, pour the floor, build the wallsand pour the slot for the edge detail. With the shell complete, you can clearly see the sloping beach entry, the steps and benches, the centralswimming area and the shallow lounging area as well as the two bridges that cut across the pool.


and a 43-foot long reflecting pool (aboutfive inches deep) – all situated within thepool’s long footprint. (The remainderof the pool’s length is taken up by step-ping pads and other amenities.)

This arrangement establishes the beachentry/shallow space for families and chil-dren to congregate. For its part, the mid-dle is dedicated to guests interested in ex-ercise,while the shallow area opposite thebeach entry offers a place for loungingor just getting your feet wet and seeksto attract an adult crowd. (This last area,by the way, also happens to be situatedright next to the bar/restaurant and theoutdoor spa.)

Lay of the LandWhen you enter the club’s main

building from the parking lot, you en-ter a grand hallway that offers a straight-ahead view across the pool to the ocean.Centered on this line, we placed a set ofstepping pads that cross the pool be-tween the beach-entry area and the lap-swimming space. In this way, you’reasked to cross the water to get to thebeach, which seems about as inviting away as possible to enjoy the space.

The limestone stepping pads are insections divided by runnels that give thepads a floating appearance. These padsare mirrored further down the pool (be-tween the lap-swimming area and theshallow lounging area) by another setof pads – but these are slightly sub-merged, giving guests a sense of walk-ing on the water.

(To heighten interest in the reflectingpool/lounging area, we also plumbedthe shelf for installation of an array oflaminar and vertical jets that could beused to create a programmed water dis-play. The resort’s owners are still de-ciding how to proceed, but the plumb-ing is all there when and if they makethe call. Ultimately, they may not beneeded to bring excitement to the space:


In building the spa, we followed much thesame process as we did in pool construction– but the spa was a much more intricately lay-ered structure that reflected the degree of free-dom I was given to do something special forthis part of the project.

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The completed spa is larger in surface area than are most swimming pools these days, and that was intentional: We wanted this to become a gath-ering space where large groups of club members could socialize, relax and share the joys of communal bathing in a warm, beautiful watershape.

I recently celebrated my birthday at theclub in an area adjoining the reflectingpool, and I was startled to see lots ofpeople dancing in the shallow water!)

We finished the three sections of thepool in three different colors of an ex-posed-aggregate material from theCrystal Stones line manufactured by C.L.Industries (Orlando, Fla.). The beach-entry area is in Mojave Red (a terra cot-ta tint); the lap-swimming area is inMidnight Blue (to match the color of theocean); and the reflecting-pool area is inBlack Pearl, which is very dark andheightens the water’s reflectivity.

The surfaces were expertly installedby Tempool (Jacksonville, Fla.). I men-tion them specifically because I use themfor all of my projects wherever I may be.I think my friend John Temple runs thebest plastering company there is, espe-cially for projects such as this one whereextreme precision is required.

We lit that gorgeous array of finisheswith low-voltage, low-wattage LED lights

placed on both sides of the pool, a totalof 30 1.5-watt lamps from Coloundra,Australia’s Megabay Lighting Enterpriseson either side in all. The lights facing theclub building are all blue to reduce anyissues with glare, while those facing thebeach are white. The mixture of blueand white light inside the pool createsa nice, soft glow.

A Glass CarpetThe pool features a complete deck-

level overflow system on all sides thatspans a staggering 497 feet in all. Theidea was to create a beautiful carpet ofwater with a vast reflective surface boundby limestone decking.

The edge detail uses special limestonegrates imported from Greece by HarrisBrothers Natural Stone Importers ofMonterey, Calif. (If the slotted mater-ial seems familiar, that’s because it’s thesame system of perimeter grates thatDavid Tisherman used in completingthe pool he discussed in Watershapes’

November 2009 issue.) The grating defines the edge of the

pool, with water flowing over the lime-stone material and down through itsslots into a six-by-six inch trough. Four-inch drop lines were placed about everyten feet along the trough, which was setat a one-degree pitch to keep the watermoving through separate six-inch-di-ameter runs we placed on each side ofthe pool.

The decking around the grates is madeof the same material as both the lime-stone grates and the stepping pads. Wepitched the decks slightly back towardthe pool to direct splash-out back intothe system.

All of these perimeter drain lines leadto a surge tank positioned beneath anequipment room situated near the re-flecting/lounging pool end of the water-shape. We supersized the surge capacityso that there will never be a problem withbather load, even when the pool is at itsbusiest on hot summer days.


Given the narrowness of the pool, weset up the pool’s steps to run most ofthe length of the pool and to frame bothsides of the lap-swimming area. Thisconfiguration is similar in approach tothe one used by Tisherman in a num-ber of his pools, where the steps grad-uate to lower levels laterally along thewall instead of extending out into thepool and taking up excessive amountsof space. In my view, it’s a great way toprovide access all along the length ofthe swimming pool.

To make everything in this outsizedwatershape work, we installed four sep-arate circulation systems – one locatedwithin each of the pool’s three sectionsand a fourth to run the edge/overfloweffect. The edge operates at 240 gallonsper minute and the beach entrance at 70gpm, while the lap area and reflectingpool operate at 144 gpm each. All theequipment was provided by Jandy (Vista,Calif.), including the pumps, cartridgefilters and various control systems. In

addition, to keep the water safe forbathers,all areas of the pool are sanitizedusing an array of Jandy’s AquaPure salt-water-chlorine generators.

We built the shell using concrete ma-sonry units (CMUs). We simply don’tbuild enough pools in Costa Rica to keepa gunite company going,so we use blocksand have developed a variety of tech-niques to make them work with pools ofany shape. In this instance,of course, theblock approach was ideal for deliveringthe very precise rectilinear forms weneeded.

As a final precaution, we included adewatering system – and did so despitethe fact that the pool is located severalfeet above sea level and we had no prob-lems with seawater intrusion during theexcavation phase. We inserted a gravelbed below the base of the pool and in-stalled an under-drain system: Any ex-cess water can be pumped to a remotewell point if the pool needs to be drainedfor any reason.

Elevated ComfortThe last of the pool area’s key features

is the spa – a portion of the project forwhich I was given far greater latitudethan I had with the pool. Given that rel-ative degree of freedom, I wanted to dosomething both different and special.

First of all, the spa is, at roughly 40-by-20 feet, larger than most swimmingpools these days – but of course that’snot unusual for major resorts or semi-public facilities such as this one. Whatis unusual is that I took themes fromIslamic architecture and incorporatedthem into the design.


The club’s fitness center is accessed along acorridor that features a long reflecting poolthat picks up the colors and textures of the sur-rounding foliage as well as the patterns castby the light coming through the overhead cov-ering. Once inside, club members have ac-cess to smaller spas that share the spirit of el-egance that marks the entire facility.

I headed in this direction because I’vealways been struck by how our bathingcustoms today are not entirely dissimi-lar (at least in public spaces) from whatthey were in the Middle East 1,000 ormore years ago. Then and now, vesselslike this are places where affluent peoplegather in an exclusive environment toindulge in warm-water relaxation – allin the midst of beautiful environments.

The analogy isn’t perfect,of course,be-cause feelings about nudity and mixed-gen-der use of common baths have changed,but for the most part, the governing prin-ciples are the same: People don’t seem tohave any objections at all to gathering andsharing the joys of bathing in beautiful wa-tershapes in beautiful places.

With that as background, I wanted tocelebrate our cultural and design traditionsby providing the resort with a spa that paidhomage to classic forms. The fact thatIslamic styles tend to play off rectilinearforms had something to do with my choic-es as well: We were quickly able to agreeon a basic spa design and details that fitcomfortably in a modern setting whileevoking the lavishness of bygone eras.

The vessel rises two feet above gradeand is surrounded at its base by an eight-inch channel of water. Atop the elevat-ed platform is a vessel that contains thespa, which is set back from the edge byabout 24 inches. There’s a second nar-row channel at this elevation, this oneemitting cold water that spills over theedge and into the channel below.

The visual impression this creates isthat the raised spa is a monolith of wa-ter that rises and spills over the edge asan uninterrupted, full-perimeter flow.

The platform itself is accessible by stepsplaced on the beach side of the spa, sofrom the club and most of the deck it in-deed has a full edge-overflow appearance.

The spa itself makes up only abouttwo-thirds of the platform’s area. We hadto use two hydraulic systems to maintainconstant, precise levels for both the hotand cold water, the goal being to keepthem both right at the level of the plat-form’s edge at all times. This gives thefurther impression that the hot and coldflows have a single source where in re-ality they are completely separate systems.

The outside wall of the spa is finishedwith a cream-colored, 12-by-12 inchTurkish marble tile – very elegant and agreat visual partner for the limestone deck-ing. The inside is finished with a four-by-four inch stone tile from Indonesia – aflesh-colored, semi-translucent materialwith interesting veins and patterns of col-or variation. It has the appearance of be-ing a mix of glass and marble,and I’ve nev-er seen anything like it.

This structure is lit with white and blueLEDs as well – blue in the lower chan-nel, white in the upper channel.

Echoing ThemeMoving beyond the pool and deck-

ing,we carried elements of the long-and-narrow theme from the watershapes overto the entryway for the club’s fitness cen-ter and locker rooms by placing a five-inch-deep, 50-by-3-foot reflecting poolto mark the center of the walkway intothe building.

Originally, the owners had wantedsmall waterfall features on either side ofthe walkway,but I felt strongly that such

an approach would be too busy and noisyfor such a confined space and pressedhard for the reflecting-pool approach.

My plan ultimately carried the day withan important compromise: Within thepool,we set three vertical jets from CrystalFountains (Toronto) to give the ownersthe option of having a flat reflecting sur-face or a subtly active waterfeature. Wefinished the pool off with four-by-four,turquoise-colored Sukabumi stone tilefrom Indonesia, inserting a white LEDlight on either end.

Finally, inside the locker rooms we in-stalled two spas – one each in the men’sand women’s locker rooms. These slight-ly raised, rectangular vessels are finishedon the outside with the same cream mar-ble tile we used on the exterior spa andon the inside with the turquoise tile weused in the entryway’s reflecting pool –again, all very simple and elegant.

I know, of course, that this projectcould probably never have been built inthe United States, basically because somany of its nicest details run afoul of lo-cal health department standards. Ourrules here in Costa Rica are much lessstringent, which freed us up to explorea greater array of creative possibilities.

No matter how you size it up, I’m in-tensely proud of this project: I enteredit feeling constrained by the rectilinearprogram the architect demanded,but asI dug deeper and deeper into the process,I found all sorts of creative, constructiveways to play with the constraints and de-velop a system that offers a variety ofaquatic experiences to club membersand guests. It’s also, I learned, a greatplace to hold a birthday party!



The completed pool complex is sheltered from the ocean breezes bytrees and structures that are richly reflected on the water’s surface. Weused the interior finishes to give its three areas their distinctive looks(an effect seen especially well in the gently sloping beach entry and onthe steps that flow down from the bridge). Day and night, the pool com-plex gives club members and their guests a wonderful place to enjoythe good life in superbly elegant surroundings. It is, as I learned, a greatplace for parties – and for more intimate gatherings!

3 Aquamatic Cover Systems • (800) 262-4044 www.aquamatic.com

17 AQUASALT • (866) 549-7665 www.aquasalt.com

55 BioNova Natural Pools • (908) 818-8135 www.bionovanaturalpools.com

19 Coastal Pond Supply • (800) 782-6179 www.coastalpond.com

25 Cover-Pools • (800) 447-2838 www.coverpools.com

7 Deck-O-Seal • (800) 542-7665 www.deckoseal.com

57 Ebac Industrial Products • (800) 433-9011 www.ebacusa.com

21 Genesis 3 Schools • (877) 513-5800 www.genesis3.com

55 Gilderfluke & Co. • (800) 776-5972 www.gilderfluke.com

55 Great American Waterfall Co. • (888) 683-0042 www.gawcinc.com

11 Hayward Commercial • (800) 657-2287 www.chemauto.com

56 Hydro Dramatics • (877) 988-7867 www.hydrodramatics.com

57 Ironsmith • (800) 338-4766 www.ironsmith.biz

60 Jandy • (800) 822-7933 www.jandy.com

15 Kenneth Lynch & Sons • (203) 264-2831 www.klynchandsons.com

59 Lightstreams Glass Tile • (650) 966-8375 www.LightstreamsGlassTile.com

8 Pebble Technology • (866) 553-0619 www.pebbletec.com

2 Roman Fountains • (800) 794-1801 www.romanfountains.com

23 Roman Fountains • (800) 794-1801 www.romanfountains.com

56 S.R. Smith • (800) 577-4424 www.poollifts.com

9 Spark Modern Fires • (866) 938-3846 www.sparkfires.com

Page

55 Deck-O-Seal

55 Polaris/Zodiac Pool Systems

55 Airmax Ecosystems

55 Aquacal/Autopilot

56 McNichols Co.

56 Laticrete

56 Pentair Water Commercial Pool & Aquatics

56 Terrapin Communications

57 Quaker Plastics

57 Natural Castings

57 Reynolds Polymer Technology

57 Paco Pumps

Page

Advertiser Index

Information Express

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SpotlightIndex

Let your suppliers know where you found out about them:Mention March 2010 WaterShapes when contacting them by phone or the interent

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Salt-Chlorination Systems

DECK-O-SEAL (Hampshire, IL) offers Deck-O-Drain, an easy-to-install drainage system for con-crete pool decks and patios. Intended to collectand carry water away quickly, the wear-resisting,non-corrosive units are made of tough, long-last-ing PVC and have a unique, non-directional de-

sign that eliminates the need for right or left fittings. In addition, aflat contour profile allows for tight fits against any walls.

AIRMAX ECOSYSTEMS (Marine City, MI) of-fers Koi Air-2 aeration kits for Koi ponds hold-ing up to 16,000 gallons. Designed to in-crease oxygen levels to ensure healthy pondlife, the units also help to ensure pond bal-ance by promoting growth of beneficial bac-

teria, reduce concentrations of toxic gases and minimize chances ofwinter fish kills by maintaining an open hole on the water’s surface.

In the SpotlightDeck-Drain System

Koi-Pond Aerator

POLARIS/ZODIAC POOL SYSTEMS (Vista, CA)has introduced the 3900 Sport, an automatic,pressure-side pool cleaner for all inground pools.It features an all-wheel drive system designedto deliver greater torque and is made usingdurable plastics and stainless steel hardware foryears of dependable service. It also has a large-capacity bag and a sweep hose that cleans even tight, hard-to-reach areas.

Pressure-Side Pool Cleaner

AQUACAL/AUTOPILOT (St. Petersburg, FL) of-fers Pool Pilot Model 75003, a digital salt chlo-rination system for pool or spa purification.Available in standard mode as a basic purifier,the system can also be upgraded with either afeed pump and tank to include pH control or, inthe Total Control mode, with the Model 75001chemistry-control module for automatic dailyadjustments of purifier and pH levels.

For live links to the companies featured here, go to www.watershapes.com/spotlight




Continued on page 56

In the Spotlight

For more info, go to www.watershapes.com/adsFor more info, go to www.watershapes.com/ads

McNICHOLS CO. (Tampa, FL) offers Eco-Mesh façade and trellis systems – mod-ular, three-dimensional wire-mesh struc-tures designed to create green walls andother green exterior amenities. Lightweightand strong, the units come in 12 different

powder-coated colors and can be attached to buildings, columns orpoles or set up as freestanding surrounds to hide utilities or create pri-vacy screens.

PENTAIR WATER COMMERCIAL POOL &AQUATICS (Sanford, NC) offers the BerkeleyB-Series centrifugal pump. Designed forcommercial aquatic facilities and high-endresidential projects, the unit works in appli-cations requiring high-performance and easy

maintenance at moderate initial cost. The unit also has a uniquepullout design that allows access to the impeller without disruptingpipes.

Wire-Mesh Features

Centrifugal Pump

LATICRETE (Bethany, CT) has published a compre-hensive technical manual to provide guidelines andrecommendations for the design, specification andinstallation of tile, stone, or glass mosaics in swim-ming pools, fountains, waterfeatures and spas.Broken into 13 in-depth sections, the manual is aimedat all designers, engineers and builders who workwith surfacing materials in submerged applications.

Tile/Stone/Glass Installation Manual

TERRAPIN COMMUNICATIONS (Ottawa,Ontario, Canada) has introduced a light-weight Safety Turtle visor. Designed to beworn by physiotherapy patients in eitherhome or institutional settings, the devicetriggers an alarm if head immersion oc-curs or the patient splashes frantically to notify an attendant thatassistance is urgently required. There’s also a wireless alert but-ton for manual operation.

Hydrotherapy Alarm




REYNOLDS POLYMER TECHNOLOGY (GrandJunction, CO) offers aquariums made using thecompany’s R-Cast high-performance acrylic. Thetechnology allows for creation of the largest, thick-est monolithic aquarium walls available anywhere,and they won’t lose strength, delaminate or yellow.They also have excellent UV resistance and areavailable in almost any size, shape or color.

Decking Forms

Acrylic Aquarium Walls

QUAKER PLASTICS (Schuylkill Haven,PA) has introduced an improved line ofStyrofoam forms to complement its kitsfor concrete and vinyl-liner pools. Thelightweight units come in three gracefulprofiles and feature both push-lock and

twist-lock attachment methods for fast, easy installation with a va-riety of pools. They also come complete with all needed nails, wash-ers, wire ties and strips.


For more info, go to www.watershapes.com/ads For more info, go to www.watershapes.com/ads

NATURAL CASTINGS (St. Louis, MO) haspublished a brochure on its CreteTex re-taining-wall systems. The walls are in-tended for the full range of residential,commercial and municipal projects andcome in multiple styles and textures formaximum design flexibility. Installed with geogrid, the pre-cast, fiber-reinforced-concrete components stack easily and se-curely with a unique locking system.

Precast Retaining Walls

PACO PUMPS (Brookshire, TX) offersa range of pumps for use in pool, wa-terpark, amusement park and other wa-terscape applications. Available withdischarges ranging from 1 to 10 inch-es, horsepower levels from 1/3 to 350and flows of up to 7,400 gallons per minute, units come in end-suction models (horizontal, vertical and frame-mounted) as wellas vertical in-line and split-case configurations.

Complete Pump Line

oncrete is an utterly amazing material,but it’s so wide-ly used – so pervasive in our world – that it’s easy forthe average person to take it for granted and barely

give it a second thought.As watershapers, of course, we don’t have the luxury of un-

derestimating concrete: With the sole exception of water, it’sfar and away the most essential of all the materials so many ofus use across a huge range of applications. We simply couldnot do what we do without it.

But how often do we deploy concrete in purely aestheticways? Some of us use artificial rock or specialized deckingtreatments,but isn’t it mostly true that we build our structuresfrom concrete and then systematically cover it up with plas-ter, stone, tile or some other surfacing material?

It didn’t take long for me to start thinking about thosequestions in different ways once I picked up my copy ofBeton/Béton/Concrete, a trilingual text prepared in Germanby Joachim Fischer with on-the-spot translations to Frenchby Marie Piontek and English by Margaret Buchanan (H.F.Ullmann, 2008).

This unique 290-page volume consists primarily of pho-tographs with short descriptive texts in those three languages,and despite its unusual nature, it’s one of the most thought-provoking collections of words and images I’ve ever seen. Itsvalue, I think, flows from the nonstop way it suggests creativeways to work with an exceptional material.

As I leafed through the book the first time, I began to seedecorative concrete as a new frontier for watershape design-ers and builders. As I dug in deeper, the book continuouslyreinforced the impression I’d formed in reviewing the worksof Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner and Antoni Gaudi thatthere’s much more to this material than one would ever gath-er from the usual “idea books”on pools, spas and fountains.

Honestly, this book blew my mind: In a conventional vein,I saw walls, decks and other familiar structures made usingconcrete that had been paired with interesting furniture,coun-tertops and a wide array of decorative features. In many cas-es, the concrete has its natural gray color but is finished witha variety of textures; there are also instances where dyes havebeen used to create wild arrays of color.

But many of the depicted projects go well beyond the con-ventional, especially where we’re shown instances where ma-

terials have been added to concrete to generate exotic effects;where forming systems of various types have been used to leaveindelible imprints; and where combinations of colors, texturesand sheens have been used to conjure a universe filled withaesthetic possibilities.

In one project, there’s a freestanding concrete wall in whichthe builder used a robotic drilling machine to bore countlesssmall holes all the way through the material, letting the light shinethrough in a variety of eye-catching patterns. In another, theconcrete mix included five percent optical fiber, resulting in aslab that transmits light directly through the material. In yet an-other instance, lightweight two-inch “beads” of concrete werestrung together with wire to create a uniquely sculpted screen.

There was also a project that simply left me gasping: In thiscase, the walls of the church were built by stacking wood logsover which concrete was poured. Once the concrete set, the logswere burnt away, leaving their imprint in the most surrealisticsurface I’ve ever seen.

Not all of the treatments are so outlandish, but I found al-most all of them to be mind-opening and expressive of thefact that we can use concrete to create a huge variety of strik-ing visual effects. I’ll never look at concrete in quite the sameway, and I can’t wait to put some of these ideas to use in myown designs!

By Mike Farley

WS

Concrete Possibilities

Mike Farley is a landscape architect with more than 20 years ofexperience and is currently a designer/project manager for ClaffeyPools in Southlake, Texas. A graduate of Genesis 3’s Level I DesignSchool, he holds a degree in landscape architecture from TexasTech University and has worked as a watershaper in both Californiaand Texas.

C


ook NotesB



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