Bring order to water feature design
1 Jun, 2005 By: Gary Kinman, Cynthia Kinman LDB SolutionsFour steps to avoid getting drenched when building water features
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There should be an order of elements in any architecture or landscape design process. Often, water features get put out of order. Many sites are not conducive to a water feature. Be upfront with your clients about the appropriateness of a water feature from a design perspective.
Sometimes people ask for a natural pond or a waterfall, and you build it just because clients asked you to. This is fundamentally wrong. An effective water feature is one that is addressed in a process that organizes the order of elements. Integrating a feature properly from the beginning will make it more useable, and ultimately more maintainable.
Step 1: The client comes first
Most clients think in terms of elements. They may want one of everything, or want their water feature bigger or better than the neighbors'. They need your guidance as a professional to determine what is appropriate for their project as a whole. You need to factor in the uniqueness of the homeowner and the site, while addressing client expectations. Pool and spa installations present plumbing challenges and concrete work that can quickly get complicated. Make sure your installers are up to the task. |
Clients may have romantic visions of a tranquil water setting, invigorating water action, entertaining fish or soothing water sounds. Clients' desires can compound the engineering required, since with water, you are working with a higher degree of technical difficulty. Your job is to discover which of the clients' perceived needs are real. As a designer, you must consider whether the water feature:
- Compliments the architecture of the home and site
- Fits in the overall design
- Provides value to the client and the property
- Will become a maintenance burden.
Step 2: Consider the site
A common mistake is to plop the element in clients' yards based on the ease of access for the contractor. Design should take precedent in deciding where the water element will be integrated to the site. The last thing you want is a water element that doesn't integrate harmoniously into the site. This is difficult to correct after the fact. Pool and spa installations present plumbing challenges and concrete work that can quickly get complicated. Make sure your installers are up to the task. |
When considering if a site is appropriate for a natural-looking water feature, begin by ensuring it has the necessary physical characteristics. Determine the extent of work that will be needed to modify the site to make a natural water feature look like it was supposed to be there.
Creating water features is an art form, and nature is the model. Installing the actual pond unit or system typically requires a visible or abrupt starting point for an artificial water source providing water to the pond, and recirculating it. In nature, that does not occur. That is where the real dilemma lies: simulating the natural source in a water feature. In addition, there is also is the problem of trying to mimic the edge between the man-made feature and nature. That too is very abrupt. In nature, stone isn't all perfectly placed in layers that are near the same sizes. Without tweaking it, you will have something that looks very man-made and imposed. Typically in nature, you don't see concentric circles or round rocks in natural water features.
Instead, you have a distribution of an assortment of sizes and shapes, and placement of materials along the edge. Experience teaches you to make stone outcrops, create plant pockets and guide waterways and streams necessary for the feature to function while looking natural. Art isn't the ability to draw, it is the ability to see. See what nature does, study it and simulate it.
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