Water, Water Anywhere
The biggest hurdle for landscape designer Jay Griffith was to persuade his clients--a writer and movie producer--to build an unconventional aboveground pool. Griffith wanted to visually integrate the pool, located on a three-quarter-acre Rustic Canyon property studded with old sycamores, with the distinctive, two-story modern home designed by architect Steven Ehrlich. “It’s not a conventional house and it’s not a conventional neighborhood,” Griffith says. “Why do a conventional fenced pool in the middle of the yard? That idea had to go.”
Griffith sited the sculptural, volumetric pool he calls “the big tank” on the southwest corner of an uphill part of the garden. “That left room for the yard itself to be more meadow-like,” he says. Poured in one continuous sweep of concrete, the 15-by-35-foot pool has 12-inch-thick walls with no seams. Water slips quietly over two sides, creating a tranquil fountain effect.
The 5-foot-high wall facing the yard also serves in lieu of a fence. “You’d have to be 6 feet tall and pretty muscle-bound to get over,” Griffith says. In addition, a stainless-steel gate seals off access to the pool area, then slides deftly out of sight into a hedge when the owners entertain.
Although there’s no diving in the 5-foot-deep pool, which is surrounded by feathery Mexican bamboo and a tall ficus hedge, the water is perfect for playing games and wading, Griffith says. Or you might lounge on the 4-by-8-foot plinth ledge--what he calls “sofa-aqueous”--by the pool’s steps. It’s a perfect place to contemplate the verdant setting and the celadon-hued water created by the mustard-colored plaster that coats the pool. In fact, the site is so bucolic that mallards occasionally stop by for a swim.
Griffith says aboveground pools cost at least 20% more than conventional ones: “There’s more steel, more engineering and the city doesn’t know what to do with this unusual type of pool. Everything you do out of the ordinary, people have a hard time with.”
*
RESOURCE GUIDE
William Hefner Architecture & Interiors, Los Angeles, (323) 931-1365; John Feldman, KAA Design Group, Los Angeles, (310) 821-1400; Dan Garness, Garness Architecture + Landscape, Los Angeles, (310) 390-2466; Rios Clementi Hale Studios, Los Angeles, (323) 634-9220; Tighe Architecture, Santa Monica, (310) 450-8823; Hagy Belzberg, Santa Monica, (310) 453-9611; George Wittman, Seattle, (206) 275-2259; Glen Irani Architects, Venice, (310) 305-8840; Todd Williamson and James Magni, Magni Design, Los Angeles, (323) 866-0600; Jay Griffith, Venice, (310) 392-5558.