Modern fountain designers in Houston
Modern fountain designers often take elements from previous styles of design and reduce them to their most fundamental components. This is practice is known as minimalism and it is a core values of all things contemporary and modern.
Reducing forms to their basic geometric elements enables designers to arrange these shapes into new combinations to create specific moods for backyards, entry gardens, private outdoor art collections, and contemporary gardens.
Modern fountain designers often do their best work in swimming pools. Our team, for example, builds every pool to custom specifications that directly correlate to the client’s house and property.
The linear movement of the pool, its angles, or any radial arc present in its design can be altered to form the backbone of a contemporary fountain. In such projects, the fountain is built to be a focal point that attracts attention and established mood through vertical impact, illumination, and the sound of free-flowing water.
Not every client wants a swimming pool in their yard, however; and some yards are simply too small for a pool of any great size. On these properties, contemporary landscaping must be quite minimalist and very conservative in its use of materials in order to keep everything in scale and proportion to the home.
One way to do this is to build a series of contemporary gardens with fountains as their centerpieces. Making the fountain more dominant than the plants is one way to control the organic aspect of the garden and keep vegetation from overpowering its sense of Mentalism.
Another way that modern fountain designers make the most of space is to build the fountain into a patio itself. Normally these are patios made from either highly polished cut stone or decorative concrete blocks. This allows the patio crew to omit enough blocks to create a symmetrical opening into which to install the fountain jets and drainage system.
Gravel or a stainless steel grating can then be used to cover the opening. Some fountains built this way feature multiple jets that spurt upward like geysers at timed intervals. Children and adults can run through the water over the fine mesh grill free of harm and cooled from the summer sun.
Aesthetically speaking, the actual appearance of the fountain can range from the purely abstract and mathematical to something more familiar to the eye. Modern fountain designers will also combine unique forms with traditional forms to generate the challenging and avant garde. Sculptures that appear as traditional forms can be placed within the confines of very rugged geometry.
One contemporary fountain constructed by a commercial developer in Houston features the sculpture of a wild boar with water pouring from its mouth. In a straight line extending backward from the razorback are jets formed like bunches of intertwining fish leaping in unison from the water.
Because light is a vital component to any contemporary or modern landscape design, modern fountain designers make it a point to use reflective materials that will reflect natural light as much as possible. At times they may also introduce stainless steel and mirrored surfaces to create intense spotlighting effects.
Artificial lighting is always installed to make sure that people can clearly see the fountain at night. Multi-colored lighting themes are becoming increasingly popular due to the pervasiveness of LED lighting, but standard white, bright light that creates a sparkle in the water also performs equally well for most modern fountains.