Not long ago, every swimming pool seemed
to stretch clear to the horizon, with infinity pools all the rage at resorts and
residences alike. These still have their place, particularly when suited to a
spectacular waterfront setting, but waterscape designers are now also turning
their attention to the creative use of glass and ceramic tile for surfaces
and accents. And they are adding lighthearted elements that underline one reason
homeowners want pools in the first place: They are beautiful sanctuaries built
purely for fun.
Some 600 feet above the
turquoise Caribbean, Jade Mountain’s two dozen suites have an open fourth-wall
panorama of the Pitons, St. Lucia’s signature peaks. These rooms also feature
their own infinity pools.
Reversible glass tiles
that change color in the light line the in-room infinity pools at St. Lucia’s
Jade Mountain. Top photograph by Macduff Everton. Bottom photograph by Leisure Works Images. (Click images to enlarge)
Individually shaped, from 450 to 900 square feet in size, and
four-and-a-half-feet deep, the pools are covered inside and out in innovative
glass tiles that seem to dance with color, changing their hue depending upon
shifts in light or the viewer’s perspective. The four-by-four-inch reversible
tiles are the work of David Knox (of Lightstreams in Mountain View, Calif.), who
spent two decades as a laser and optical system designer and developer. For Jade
Mountain, part of the Anse Chastanet resort, he devised a formula for glass that
is textured and iridescent on one side and smooth and undulating on the other.
(The latter is used on the walls of each suite’s open shower.)
"I wanted a certain amount of light to pass through the glass
and a certain amount to reflect from its front, back and internal surfaces,"
Knox says, adding that he wanted those effects to occur in an unpredictable
manner. He produced 30 color choices, and Nick Troubetzkoy, the resort’s owner
and architect, ultimately chose 24—ranging from cobalt and ruby red to emerald,
bronze and deep purple.
Troubetzkoy, known for his penchant for tinkering with his
architectural plans, initially conceived Jade Mountain as six hillside villas
with four suites each. "What a flawed concept that was," he remembers. After
ground was broken, he stood on the site and said, "We can’t see the Pitons." To
maximize the view, his design evolved into a curved, four-story structure whose
height is balanced by low-slung bridges. Interiors—each suite ranges from 1,400
to 2,000 square feet—emphasize stone, wood and coral plaster. The Pitons seem to
hover just beyond each pool’s infinity edge.
"Working with Nick was a sculptural experience," says Knox. "He
works off images he holds in his mind, and doesn’t mind experimenting. He wanted
the glass to be a finish, not a tile."
The glass changes from lively and transparent in sunlight to
moody and opaque after dark, when fiber-optic lights illuminate the pools. Every
tile—250,000 pieces throughout the resort—is unique, Knox points out, containing
a billion points of reflection that rival the stars in St. Lucia’s night
sky.
David Knox, Lightstreams, 650.966.8375,
www.lightstreamsglasstile.comAnse Chastanet, 800.223.1108,
www.ansechastanet.com
As a luxury home developer,
Mitch Menaker has commissioned a number of swimming pools over the course of his
career. But when he thought about the waterscape for his own Orlando residence,
on the 11th fairway of Lake Nona’s Tom Fazio golf course, he wanted something
different.
"I’d been to Hearst Castle several times," Menaker says.
"There’s a glass mosaic pool there, and I thought it was fascinating." He had
used marble mosaic for waterline tiles before, but began to wonder what it would
be like to cover an entire pool with the material.
Menaker and an associate drew a design based on motifs used in
Persian carpets. Three large medallions in an earth-tone palette adorn the
surfaces of the free-form 850-square-foot pool. The adjacent spa reflects the
back-ground pattern.
To produce the mosaics, Menaker relied on a manufacturing
partner in Lebanon. The design was put onto auto-CAD and e-mailed to Beirut,
where it was enlarged to full pool size. There, artisans hand-cut marble into
roughly 500,000 tiny tiles, each measuring less than a half-inch square, and
matched them to the colors indicated on the design—a process Menaker likens to a
sophisticated version of painting by numbers. The pieces were glued to a mesh
backing, which, for reasons of weight, was cut into about 25 numbered strips
before being shipped to Florida.
At the Lake Nona estate, the pool was lined with gunite and
then "floated," or covered with a smooth surface, which was hand-troweled. To
fit the mosaic and attach it with epoxy, Menaker commissioned a dedicated
craftsman, who spent six weeks painstakingly installing the tiles.
The pool is the centerpiece of an outdoor recreation area that
complements Menaker’s Spanish colonial home. "The interior looks like it was
built 300 years ago," he notes, but the outside is clearly designed for modern
entertaining. The decking around the pool is made of 12-inch-square travertine
pavers set in sand. There is also an adobe screen wall that encompasses an
outdoor wood-burning fireplace, which faces the spa.
The project’s success has prompted Menaker to include even more
elaborate mosaic pools on three properties he is developing. "There’s one with
blue bahia stone," he says, "and one that is very Moorish arabesque."
Menaker Development, 407.948.2853,
www.menakerdevelopment.comDesign professionals Jennifer
Mumford and her husband, Rob Brady, enjoy the style of their 1926 Arts and
Crafts cottage, which is listed on the Sarasota Historic Register. "It’s a sweet
little bungalow," says Mumford, who is the director of the design center at
Ringling College of Art and Design; her husband runs his own firm, Robrady
Design. When they wanted more outdoor living and entertaining space, however,
their compact 4,150-square-foot backyard offered a challenge.
To replace their "falling-down" garage, they hired architect
Jonathan Parks to build a cozy poolhouse, and Mumford designed a pool to be
situated between it and their residence. Those plans changed, however, when she
found out she was expecting. Faced with having to fence the entire area, she
instead sited the pool to one side, where it could be blocked off and still
leave most of the yard open for entertaining.
The finished pool is 12 feet wide and 26 feet long, with the
first six feet forming a large step, just two inches deep. That shallow area
provides an elegant version of a kiddie pool. "We put lounge chairs in it,"
Mumford says, and "there’s a bubbler." There are also receptacles for sun
umbrellas. "It’s inviting but also architectural," she adds.
Defining the far edge of the pool is a mosaic waterfall wall of
one-inch glass tiles by Hakatai in a myriad shades of blue, interspersed with
clear glass. Water splashes down into a spa, then over a barrier to the deep
end. Inside the adjacent poolhouse, the mosaic is echoed in a freestanding wall
that divides the compact, modern space.
In front of the poolhouse entry, a random-textured, earth-toned
concrete hardscape surrounds a rectangle of lawn with a fire pit. The site of
frequent parties, the pool area is popular with all members of the family. "My
16-year-old daughter and her friends use it. And we put up the umbrellas and sit
with the baby, while he plays with his trucks in the water," Mumford says with a
laugh.
Jonathan Parks Architect, 941.365.5721,
www.jpa-architect.comDavid Tisherman, based in
Manhattan Beach, Calif., brings a well-honed philosophy to his work as a master
designer of water effects. "Water is nothing more than an amorphic, colorless,
odorless material that is highly reflective," he says. "Pools are visual. You
look at a pool 65 to 75 percent of the time. If they don’t look wonderful, they
become a negative." One option is to use water "to reflect the environment," he
says. "In that case, the pool mimics everything that is beautiful. Another
option is to use water as an art form." An art form with a secondary use, that
is.
That is the approach he took with a client whose Southern
California home overlooks the Pacific. The woman, a sophisticated patron of the
arts, searched for years for someone who could create the spectacular water
effect she wanted. Most designers suggested infinity pools, but the client was
looking for something a little different. Luckily, she found a kindred soul in
Tisherman, who feels strongly that perimeter overflow pools don’t belong in
every setting.
Striving for a design that would blend with the style of the
house, he devised a whimsical aquatic environment that featured an amorphic
pool, roughly 42 feet long. Tisherman designed glass tiles that he arranged to
have handmade in Italy in a combination of opaque, iridescent and translucent
blues, greens and whites, arrayed like dots in a pointillist painting, to create
the brilliantly hued "ocean" of the pool and spa.
At the edge of the spa, water runs down a dam wall to a
two-inch-deep horizontal platform, that forms a thermal ledge, a pleasant place
to sit with one’s ankles in the water. Both the dam wall, which depicts a marine
scene with fish and sea creatures, and the thermal ledge are made of
three-dimensional vitreous ceramic tile fabricated in Denby, England, with a
texture that is accentuated as water moves over it. Rough, pitted Veracruz stone
suggests seafloor sponges, and the Hillsborough stone decking, which has a
custom bullnose edge and a template that fits the radius and curves of the pool,
evokes California’s white sand. Even the landscaping calls to mind coral sea
fans.
The pool "was designed for children," Tisherman says, and
therefore is just three-and-a-half-feet deep at one end, four feet at the other
and five feet in the center. It was made to be "conducive to volleyball and
lounging. It’s for fun, but it’s also an artistic work."
David Tisherman’s Visuals, 310.379.6700,
www.tisherman.com
