The Importance of Custom Masonry in Houston Landscape Design

What is custom masonry?
Custom masonry is a very pronounced form of hardscape that rises up from the ground, adding a third dimension to the landscape beyond that offered by a simple foundation or patio.

Masonry includes a multiplicity of forms most of us have seen all of our lives. Most of these forms date back to ancient times and have become iconic of the mythic and archetypal in our collective consciousness. Brick walls, stone patios, columns, seat walls, stone steps, and stone retaining walls, have dominated everything from the Sumerian landscape to the Houston landscape, and many places and times in between.

Where does masonry offer the greatest aesthetic impact on the Houston landscape?
Its strongest virtue, as the Ancients would say, is that it marries the architecture to the landscape. Such unity is prerequisite to creating a truly livable outdoor space that defines activity with aesthetic itself. When we introduce the masonry elements of the home by building them out into the open spaces of the yard, we create a feeling of unity between hardscape and softscape that implies a return to a state of Nature, and a blissful life of harmony with the elemental forces of life.

What are some examples of custom masonry?
Some of them are surprisingly unobtrusive until you get close enough to see them. Custom drain grates, mosaics, and custom stone patterns constitute the “little things” that transform functionality into sophisticated ornamentation.

How does custom masonry support swimming pool construction?
Custom masonry is literally the backbone of swimming pool construction. It is the predominant material for cladding the substructure of the pool. This superstructure includes the beams that stabilize the entire structure, the pool shell itself, and the concrete that forms the actual bottom of the pool.

How does custom masonry support garden design?
Since gardens are almost completely organic, the selective addition of custom masonry elements ties the vegetation directly into the architecture of the home. For a typical garden, a small architectural wall, or a planter running parallel to a wall, is often all that is needed to link apparently divergent realities into a interrelated, interdependent unity. Larger gardens can also be linked to key elements of the Houston landscape with more elaborate masonry work.

How does custom masonry support outdoor room construction?
As we have previously noted, masonry has been the main element of architecture for millennium. Outdoor room construction follows this principle. Since most outdoor rooms are open to the air on at least one side so that people can have a view of the Houston landscape, the importance of custom masonry is even more pronounced, because it is in the nuances and subtleties of design that unique outdoor living spaces find true expression in the form of new and innovative boundaries and spaces.