Pure Water Pools - Custom Pools, Spas, BBQ's, Fireplaces

Pure Water Pools - WaterShapes - June 2002

Maintaining an unobstructed view was a key goal for this backyard project - a natural given the lot's sweeping view of Newport Beach's Back Bay. The landscape architect answered the need with a set of crisp lines that carry the eye to distant views, and he was open to our suggestion for softening the chessboard look by using a wide, continuous band of poured-in-place concrete rather than a pre-cast, sectional coping.

Beauty on the Bay

   Our relationship with Pederson is a two-way street. Sometimes he'll contact us in the early stages of design development; other times, he calls after the plans have been created. We return the favor by passing his name to watershape clients in need of a top-flight designer.
   In either circumstance, the focus is always on clients' needs. In fact, successful collaborations between contractor and designer always begin with clients, no matter whose door they happen to knock on first. Very often, the process starts when a couple returns from a vacation on which they saw a great swimming pool or sat in a great spa. Sometimes all it takes is a picture in a magazine. However it progresses, the idea starts with the customer, moves to the designer and then goes to the contractor for implementation.
   If the designs are complicated and/or exceptional, early and constant coordination between the builder and the architect is required to ensure that the plan is mechanically feasible and still captures the illusion the architect and clients are seeking. In the case of the first project illustrated here - a set of watershapes for a home high on a cliff overlooking Newport Beach's Back Bay - we were involved very early.
   The home had been one of the models for its development, and the owners basically wanted to start with a clean slate out back. Pedersen had already drawn up some plans that reflected his usual care in considering their personalities - in this case with clean, crisp lines that harmonized with the colors and minimalist styling of the home's interior.
   He also determined that they wanted to fill a very small space with lots of functionality - a lap pool, decorative water features, a barbecue and a spa with a cascade, all in a 35-by-50-foot space and none of its structures to interfere with the view of the bay and Newport Beach through a long glass wall.
  As designed, the backyard was to include a 41-by-9-foot lap pool installed slightly above grade beneath the length of the view wall. The spa and associated hardscape at one end of the yard offered a set of angular forms, mostly squares with rounded corners. The overall effect was one of a chessboard in soft, muted tones.

From the start, Pedersen asked us for feedback and ideas. Originally, the working design had called for sections of pre-cast coping around the pool and spa that we thought exaggerated the chessboard effect. As an alternative to all those additional squares, we suggested using a continuous, double-wide strip of poured-in-place concrete to provide a smooth, unbroken line running the length of the pool and terminating at the raised wall. This would lead the eye directly to the skyline and the distant views.
Pedersen and the clients liked the idea and altered the plan accordingly.

Care in Collaboration

   We also had several discussions with Pedersen about a wall that doubled as the spa/waterfeature wall and as a place to hide the equipment. The layout was a challenge because the small equipment area also housed two air conditioning units for the house.
We were really hemmed in. Between finding room for the pool equipment and working around the air conditioning units, we had to find clearances for electrical panels and setbacks from property lines. Our marching orders were to make it all fit in as little space as possible to maximize the yard. (This was extremely expensive real estate, after all, and the clients didn't want to see too much of it devoted the making everything work!)
   Adding to the fun, the clients wanted to be able to run a series of planter-based "spitters" across the raised pool edge when the pool was not circulating. This meant that these small waterfeatures needed their own pump. In addition, they wanted five additional jets in the spa - and the extra pump that would make them work.
   The space allotted on the plans was not large enough to accommodate all of this, so we went back to the plans and widened what we were now calling the "equipment wall" - which altered the weight of the Kashmir slate finish relative to the coping and threw things out of visual balance.
Pedersen suggested raising the wall's height to compensate for the added width along with the addition of a decorative precast cap to match the coping cap. This adjustment enabled us to maintain the balance and clean lines while giving the clients all the bells and whistles they wanted.

The wall rising behind the spa serves to hide the home's air-conditioning units as well as all of the pool and spa equipment - and became bigger as new features were added to the project. Maintaining visual balance was a challenge solved by making the wall a bit higher than originally had been intended and by giving it some finish details that picked up on the style of the coping.

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