Smart & Wired: Alfresco Entertaining
July 1, 2003
The essential elements of outdoor entertaining—grills and outdoor kitchen accessories, swimming pools, fountains, light displays and sound systems—have risen to new levels of sophistication. Alfresco entertaining has evolved to include everything from private spas with on-call staff to lagoons filled with sharks. The “outdoor room,” as it has been dubbed, has morphed from a terrace or patio into an entire private resort.
From his offices in Santa Barbara, Beverly Hills, Laguna Beach and Palm Beach, landscape architect Robert Truskowski orchestrates these haute havens. Truskowski has put his signature touches on estates and villas from the Hamptons to Hawaii and beyond, such as Mick Jagger’s Stargrove estate on the island of Mustique.
Quick to identify and interpret trends, Truskowski increasingly finds himself removing tennis courts in favor of putting greens and creating water environments of staggering complexity. “Golf seems to be prevailing over tennis, and swimming pools have become much more involved, incorporating everything from multiple levels and cascades to utilizing ozone purification instead of chlorine,” he says.
Rock & Waterscape Systems recently created an underwater fantasy in Newport Beach, Calif., by placing an enormous saltwater reef tank between a sunken family living area and the swimming pool. Acrylic walls allow people in the living area to look through the tank into the swimming pool, while swimmers have the same vista in reverse into the house.
If this sounds like something you would only experience in a Las Vegas resort, perhaps it is, because the firm (a regular collaborator with Truskowski on projects requiring serious waterworks) fabricates and installs lavish aquatic environments for resorts worldwide. “Often, our clients will see something they love at a resort, such as the Atlantis, and ask us to bring some version of that to their home,” says Lance Friesz, vice president of marketing at Rock & Waterscape Systems. “Because of our experience in the commercial arena, that’s no problem.”
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