Mon-C4 Waters Edge - The Connection Between Urban Fountains and People

8/17/2019 Mon-C4 Waters Edge - The Connection Between Urban Fountains and People

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Claire Kahn, Executive DesignerTeresa Powell Caldwell, Vice President

WET

www.wetdesign.com

WATER’S EDGE: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN URBAN FOUNTAINS AND PEOPLE

PRESENTATION SUMMERY:

Water design responds to numerous contexts and conditions, bringing people together by creating places for thecommunity to gather and recreate. WET will explore the diverse and original uses of water through the presentation

of works by Robert Woodward, Carlo Scarpa, Arthur Erickson and others. WET will present their own work as part ofthe overall discussion, including the design of water in municipal centers and commercial development, and will show

a spectrum of examples of water design, from the central kinetic event to ambient, interwoven works that respondto surrounding architecture and landscape. We will discuss innovation and how water has come to challenge the

boundaries of traditional treatments. We will show contemporary water design in a discussion about the uses of water inan environment where fountains are increasingly under scrutiny, often perceived as wasteful and unnecessary and how,through innovative and thoughtful handling, water can continue to provide effective, inventive and vital works that bring

collective pleasure to the community.

This presentation explores original design in water as it integrates with its surrounding architecture and landscape. WhileWET is key in the industry for developing cutting edge technical innovation, this presentation will focus on the aesthetics

of water design found in the works of selected designers and in the installations and collaborations of WET.

LIST OF PROJECTS

WET and WET Collaborations:

Allied Bank, Fountain Place, with Kiley Walker and Associates, Dallas TX, 1984

Museum Of Modern Art, garden fountain, with Philip Johnson, New York NY 1987Prometheus Plaza Fountain, Rockefeller Center, with Abe Fader, New York NY, 1988

Fashion Island, with SWA, Newport Beach CA, 1991Gas Company Tower, with Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Laurie Olin, Los Angeles CA, 1991

California Plaza Water Court, with Arthur Erickson, Los Angeles CA, 1992Universal City Walk, Universal City CA, 1993

Millennia Walk, with Philip Johnson, Singapore, 1994Ritz-Carlton, with Roche-Dinkeloo, Singapore, 1994Pinklao Shopping Center, Bangkok Thailand, 1995

Seattle Center International Fountain, Seattle WA, 1995McCormick Convention Center, Chicago IL, 1996

Danamon Bank, with Pei, Cobb Freed and Partners, Jakarta Indonesia, 1997The Fountains of Bellagio, Las Vegas NV, 1998

Carlsbad Premium Outlet, Carlsbad CA, 2000Mideld Terminal, Detroit Metro Airport, Detroit MI, 2002Brooklyn Museum, with Polshek Partnership, Brooklyn NY, 2004

The City of Beverly Hills Reverse Osmosis Water Plant, Beverly Hills CA, 2004Columbus Circle, with The Olin Partnership, New York NY, 2005

Beijing Finance Street, with SWA and Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Beijing China, 2007Fanfare at San Pedro Gateway, with EDAW, San Pedro CA, 2008

Citycenter, Las Vegas NV (5 Features), 2009Dubai Fountain, Dubai UAE, 2009Revson Fountain at Lincoln Center, with Diller Scodio + Renfro, New York NY, 2009


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Work by Others:

SWA / Skidmore Owings and Merrill

Weyerhaeuser Headquarters, Tacoma WA, 1971Pedro Ramirez Vasquez

National Anthropology Museum. Mexico City, 1971Carlo ScarpaQuerini Stampalia Foundation, Venice, Italy, 1961

Monument to the Partisan Women, with Augusto Murer, Venice Italy, 1968

Brion Family Cemetery, San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso, Italy, 1969-1978Arthur EricksonSimon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, 1965

Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 1971Provincial Law Courts Robson Square, Vancouver, Canada, 1973Robert Woodward

Alcoa Building Plaza Fountain, with SWA, San Francisco CA, 1964Darling harbor Spiral Fountain, Sydney Australia,

SWACharlston Park, Mountain View CA, 2000

Le CorbusierNotre Dame de Haut, Ronchamp France, 1955

Antonio Gaudi

Park Güell, Barcelona Spain, 1900-1914Ruth Asawa

Buchanan Mall Fountain, San Francisco CA, 1976

SUBJECTS

Water in Architecture and Landscape

Examples include works by selected designers and architects, landscape architects and WET.

Ira Kahn


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The Edge / Transition

An open pool is an aesthetic decision not a default solution:

How fountains engage with their surrounding landscape and architecture.

Ira Kahn

Small Fountains

Exterior and Interior fountains that enliven a site.

David Sanders


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Fountains For The Community, The Connection Between Water and People

How people interact with fountains in an urban setting.

How public and municipal fountains inspire communities in a critical time of water conservation.

Ira Kahn

Rejuvenation

Thoughtfully introducing new ideas and technology to a historical icon.


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A Presentation of Recent Works by WET

A collaboration with EDAW at the LA Harbor,The fountains of Las Vegas including, The Bellagio and Citycenter,

A historic renovation at Lincoln Center Center, and the largest fountain in the world.

Martn Ledford

David Sanders

Ira Kahn

David Sanders

Martin Ledford


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OUTLINE

I. WATER IN ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCSPEThe exploration of water design as an integrated and vital part of the site.

Examples include:

Carlo Scarpa: Querini Stampalia and the Brion Family Cemetery

Skidmore Owings and Merrill and SWA: Weyerhaeuser Headquarters

Arthur Erickson: Simon Fraser UniversitySkidmore, Owings and Merrill, The Olin Partnership and WET: Gas Company TowerWET: Citycenter, Focus

II. THE EDGE / TRANSITION

Treatments that challenge conventions about how water meets its surrounding hard-scape. The magic found in thetransition.

I.M. Pei and Partners, Kiley Walker and Associates and WET: The Allied Bank, Fountain Place

Pei Cob Freed and Partners and WET: Danamon BankPhillip Johnson and WET: Millenia WalkSkidmore Owings and Merrill, SWA and WET: Beijing Finance Street

III. SMALL FOUNTAINSFountains that are tranquil, interior fountains, and playful interactive water expressions for children.

Water is a exible medium. It can express tranquility as a reective surface or delicately join with its surroundingarchitecture. Water can be formed into an iconic focal point for the center of a municipality, or be made to move with great

force and vibrant kinetics. Designing with small amounts of water - no splash and no overspray - creates delightful andwhimsical experiences that are both entertaining and energy efcient.

Ruth Asawa : Buchanan Mall Fountain

Antonio Gaudi: Park GüellSWA and WET: Fashion IslandWET: Pinklao Shopping Center

WET: McCormick Convention CenterWET: City of Beverly Hills Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Plant

WET: Universal City WalkWET: Citycenter, Halo and Glacia

IV. FOUNTAINS FOR THE COMMUNITYPlaces for people, municipalities and restorations of beloved public fountains.

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During a time of water conservation at home, communities have a place where they can collectively go to experiencethe remedial and refreshing qualities of water in an urban environment. Municipal and Public fountains are designed to

conserve water responsibly and new technologies and treatments minimize waste.

SWA: Charleston Park

SWA and Robert Woodward: Alcoa BuildingRobert Woodward: Darling Harbor

EDAW and WET: Fanfare at San Pedro GatewayWET: Detroit Mideld Terminal

WET: CitycenterWET: Seattle Center International FountainArthur Erickson and WET: California Plaza Water Court

Skidmore Owings and Merrill, SWA and WET: Beijing Finance Street


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2.Rejuvenating a public fountain that has become a historic icon in the community gives us the opportunity to replace worn

units with energy efcient ones. Fountains can be brought back to opening day condition while looking untouched by newtechnology. Visual modications can also be made to judiciously change the fountain design in order to fully express its

original aesthetic objective.

Diller Scodio Renfro and WET: Lincoln CenterThe Olin Partnership and WET: Columbus Circle

Abe Fader and WET: Prometheus Plaza, Rockefeller CenterPhilip Johnson and WET: The Museum of Modern Art, New YorkPolshek Partnership and WET: Brooklyn Museum

V. PRIMA DONNA DIVAS, THE BIGGEST FOUNTAINS IN THE WORLD

Fast Company named Mark Fuller, WET’s founder and CEO, number 54 of the “100 most creative people in business”, in2010. They also named WET, one of the “world’s 50 most innovative companies”. I would like to think that the accolades

come because of our original thinking and collaborative enthusiasm to create, as a team with others, poetic works wherewater and architecture seamlessly interweave. As examples will show, they do.WET has also created The Fountains of Bellagio on Las Vegas Boulevard and the Dubai Fountain at the base of the great

Burj Khalifa. These and certain other WET water features command attention. They are not yielding to their site, however

they are directly informed by their surrounding culture, and program. They connect profoundly with people of all ages andstripes. They are emotionally engaging. Their transition is not water to land, but water to people and to the sky.

WET: The Fountains of BellagioWET: The Dubai Fountain

BIOGRAPHIES:

Claire Kahn, Executive designer at WET, is responsible for the rm’s design process and philosophy. In her twenty veyears with WET Kahn has designed water feature projects for the Los Angeles Music Center; Gas Company Tower inLos Angeles; The Barcelona World Trade Center; Columbus Circle in New York; San Pedro Gateway; The Fountains of

Bellagio and selected fountains for City Center in Las Vegas. Prior to joining WET, Kahn worked at San Francisco ofcesof Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Kahn is a guest lecturer at Stanford University and a faculty member at the Stanford

Continuing Studies program. She has taught design at California College of The Arts and lectured at UC Berkeley, CalPoly and the Rhode Island School of Design. Kahn is the creator of the Tuttle Scholarship Award at RISD. Kahn graduated

from Stanford University with a Bachelors degree in design, recipient of the University’s Humanities Award.

Teresa Powell-Caldwell joined WET Design in 2000 and is now Vice President of Business and Project Development.

Her department identies new business opportunities, cultivates and maintains client relationships, and negotiates newproposals and contracts. Teresa has 18 years of business development and public relations experience in both the real

estate and architecture industry. Previous employers include Cushman & Wakeeld, Maguire Thomas Partners, JohnsonFain & Pereira and AC Martin Partners.Teresa earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English with emphasis on Medieval and Renaissance Period Literature from

St. Mary’s College in California and completed her studies at Oxford University in England. She also holds an Associateof Arts Degree in Journalism from Los Medanos College.

Teresa is a certied PADI Rescue Diver and is also a whitewater kayak trip leader for the Sierra Club. She serves on theBoard of Directors for the Los Angeles Headquarters Association.


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READING LIST

Books:

Sergio Los, Carlo Scarpa , Cologne, © 1993 Benedikt Taschen

Francesco Dal Co and Giuseppe Mazzariol, Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works ,Milan, Electa Editrice © 1984, New York, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Richard Murphy, Querini Stampalia Foundation , London, © 1993 Phaidon Press limited

Charles W. Moore, Water and Architecture , New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Marilyn Symmes, Fountains Splash and Spectacle New York, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., © 1998 Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Magazines:

Peter Walker and Jane brown Gillette, Land Forum , Isuue 9, “WET Design”Berkeley CA, Spacemaker Press © 2001

Xu Anzhi and Leon Wood, World Architecture Review , 80/81, “Special issue on WET Design” Shenzhen University, World Architecture Review Agency © 2001

John Seabrook, The New Yorker Magazine , January 11, 2010,“Water Music, The fountain architect who gave water a voice.”

New York, Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., © 2010, Condé Nast, 36-40

Ann Marsh, Stanford Magazine ,“WH2OA, The worlds foremost fountaineer, Mark Fuller creates water displays that take your breath away.”Stanford California, July/August 2010, Volume 39, © 2010,Stanford Alumni Association, 52-57

Edie Cohen, Interior Design , June 2010 Volume 81 no. 8,

“Shooting For The Stars, No one can top the fountain designers at WET in Sun Valley California”New York, © 2010 Interior Design, 142-149

Fast Company, June, 2010, The 100 Most Creative People in Business ,See page 70 for contributors

New York, © 2010 Mansueto Ventures, LLC, page 99

Fast Company, March, 2010, The 100 Most Creative People in Business ,New York, © 2010 Mansueto Ventures, LLC, page 103

Newspapers:

Mayer Rus, Los Angeles Times Magazine, January 21, 2010,

“City Slicker, From Rus With Love” on Citycenter, Las Vegas

Robin Pogrebin, New York Times Magazine, The Arts, August 26 2009,“The Lincoln Center Fountain is Being Taught Some New Moves”

For more information about the work of WET, visit www.wetdesign.com


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WET Prole

WET develops contextually motivated works in water using conditions of the site to inform design. Diverse physical andcultural environments guide the development of a WET fountain. Design and invention combine to express the unique

character of each project.

Founded twenty-seven years ago by Mark Fuller, WET has established itself as an innovative design company thatemploys approximately 200 multi-talented individuals, ranging among designers, architects, landscape architects,

planners, graphic designers, inventors, special effects technicians, choreographers, control system engineers and projectmanagers.

Synthesis, kinetics and interaction are inherent in a WET fountain. The absence of physical barriers enables the fountainto engage its environment and invites participation and interaction.

Water is sensuous and experiential. It yields a natural inclination and fascination in the perceiver to touch and feel. Designin concert with invention explores these realms through form, material, color and light, creating the experience that is a

WET fountain.


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The fountain architect who gave water a voice.

C R E D I T T K

The renovated Revson Fountain, at Lincoln Center, can fire water as high as sixty feet into the air . Photograph by Eve Sonneman.

W hen Philip Johnson designed themain plaza at Lincoln Center, inthe early sixties, he imagined a glowing,pulsating column of water at the center,a feature that would give the modernistpiazza, he once said, “the focal point afireplace gives a home.” The result wasthe Revson Fountain. When it opened, inApril, 1964, it was the most technically

advanced fountain New York had everseen; the Times thought it might be “themost sophisticated blending of light and

water in this country,” noting that thenozzles and the lights were controlled by“computer programmed tapes.” In thefountain’s signature move, a six-foot-widecolumn of frothy water rose into the air,brilliantly illuminated from below. Whenthe pumps were abruptly shut off , the wa-

ter appeared to float in the air. If architec-

ture is frozen music, as Goethe said, thenthe Revson was liquid architecture. Itquickly became an icon of the city.

But over the years the fountain’s pow-ers diminished. In hydraulic terms, it lost“head”—vertical thrust—mainly as aresult of leaky valves, which is the wayfountains, like people, tend to fail. Themovies document this sad decline. In

“The Producers” (1968), one can see theRevson in its prime, when Gene Wildercelebrates his new partnership with ZeroMostel by prancing around the wateryeruption, but from “Manhattan” (1979)to “Ghostbusters” (1984) and “Moon-struck” (1987) there is an observable lossof potency. By the time of its appearancein “Sweet Home Alabama” (2002), thefountain looked ragged, and was out of

commission for stretches of time—just

another clever modernist idea that didn’tlast. The drained basin of the fountain, with its exposed plumbing, gave theplaza the focal point that a toilet gives abathroom.

In 2006, Lincoln Center launched a$1.3-billion redevelopment project, andamong the many improvements to the

arts complex—two additional restau-rants, a roof garden, two groves, and anew approach from Broadway—wasa plan for a new fountain. There wasnever any serious discussion about try-ing to fix the old one, Reynold Levy, thepresident of Lincoln Center, told merecently. “It was like the decision to re-place an old mainframe computer witha P.C.”—a no-brainer. There was, how-ever, “a great deal of discussion about

what the new fountain should be.” Thefirm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the leaddesigners of the redevelopment plan,came up with a number of options, in-cluding moving the fountain off centerand, instead of a circular fountain, cre-ating a linear strip of water. But in theend, Levy told me, “everyone agreedthat the fountain was properly placed,and was the right size, and people should

still be able to sit at the edge, on the gran-


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ite pedestal.” Diller Scofidio did replace Johnson’s monolithic granite base witha thin granite disk that rests on slendersteel supports—a significant improve-ment—and lower the water level in thefountain’s basin to match the level of thepavement.

The fountain’s innards would be gut-

ted and rebuilt. To accomplish that, thearchitects proposed bringing in WET De-sign ( WET stands for Water Entertain-ment Technologies), the Los Angeles-based water-features firm, led by MarkFuller. Fuller, who is fifty-eight, may bethe closest thing the world has to a foun-tain genius. He and his colleagues at

WET, which he co-founded in 1983, havebrought a new language to fountain ar-chitecture by giving the water itself a

voice: playful, mischievous, sometimesbombastic, sometimes serene. In theUnited States, WET’s projects includeFountain Place, in Dallas, in which watersquirts from tiny holes in the pavement,draining through narrow slots into a“vanished pool” below the surface; theGrove at Farmers Market, in Los Ange-les, a sort of liquid cornfield, in whichthe stalks are made of water; the kinetic

water-sculpture fountain in the McNa-mara Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport, which emits water sparks; and the dou-

ble row of water plumes outside theBrooklyn Museum. Among other things,

WET has extended the tradition of thefountain as trickster, a player of watergames, which the Italian Renaissancefountaineers mastered, and which theyemployed to great eff ect at Villa d’Este,in Tivoli, outside Rome.

But WET is best known for the foun-tains at the Bellagio hotel and casino inLas Vegas, which Steven Spielberg hascalled “the greatest single piece of publicentertainment on planet Earth.” Thesefountains, which occupy the better partof an eight-and-a-half-acre lake, are pro-grammed to dance to particular tunes—“Singin’ in the Rain,” which was createdby the choreographer and director KennyOrtega, is a crowd favorite. WET also didthe spectacular water features that are

part of the volcano at the Mirage, justdown the Strip from the Bellagio. Morerecently, WET built the Dubai Fountain, which opened in May, and is the big-gest fountain in the world. It can projectpainted images on its water forms, andblast water fifty stories high.

Lincoln Center wasn’t in the marketfor a fountain like that. “We made it clearthat we were not looking for a thirteenthart form at Lincoln Center,” Levy said.“And we are not Las Vegas. We didn’t

want something that would take awayfrom the 8 P.M. curtain.” Was there anyinterest in making the fountain musical,like those at the Bellagio? “No music,”Levy said firmly. “Because that wouldn’thave been appropriate.”

Diller Scofidio presented some ren-derings of tasteful waterworks that reas-sured the board, and, Liz Diller, one ofthe firm’s principals, said, “we went to see

WET’s headquarters, in California, and we were very impressed. It was obvious

they were the best qualified for the job.” The Revson Foundation contributed fourmillion dollars to the cost of the renova-tion. In early 2007, Lincoln Center de-cided to get WET.

Mark Fuller is compact and ener-getic, and has a worried air abouthim; it often seems as if he’s working outa problem in the back of his mind, evenas he’s talking about something else. Hehas stocky fingers that twitch sometimes

when he talks, as if he were itching totake something apart, and his posture isslightly stooped, as if from years of lean-


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ing over a workbench. In demeanor andappearance, he looks like an engineer,but there’s a showman inside Fuller, andhis alter ego comes out in his dancingfountains.

He grew up in a family without muchmoney, on the outskirts of Salt LakeCity. In the spring, when the snow began

to melt, water would rush down thesloped streets, and Mark would makeelaborate networks of snow dykes, sluices,and spillways for the water to flowthrough. Disneyland opened in Ana-heim, California, in 1955, and Markmade his first visit, with his parents, when he was fourteen. The park made alasting impression on him; he was par-ticularly enchanted by the underwatersubmarine ride and the Jungle Cruise. As a teen-ager, Fuller built a miniature

jungle cruise in the back yard for the fam-ily’s goldfish, complete with lagoonsand underwater tunnels, using an old washing-machine motor to propel the water through the system. He even con-structed his own underwater lights. “HereI was, fooling around with a hundred-and-twenty-volt current, in water, butnobody seemed concerned,” he said.

In high school, Fuller was interestedin theatre and, recognizing that in “ap-pearance and stature I was not Charlton

Heston,” he channelled his theatrical im-pulses into sets and props. At the Univer-sity of Utah, he studied civil engineering

while continuing to do set design—forAeschylus’ “Agamemnon,” he created analtar that breathed fireballs—in an eff ortto unite his seemingly disparate interests.An opportunity came after one of his pro-fessors showed the class a 16-mm. filmthat demonstrated laminar flow, a well-known principle in hydraulics.

In an ordinary garden hose, the

water flow is turbulent. Water mole-cules are bouncing off one another cha-otically, moving at diff erent velocities,under changing pressure. When the water is projected out of the nozzle, itsplinters into spray. In a laminar stream,the molecules all flow in the same direc-tion, and surface tension binds the water as it emerges from the nozzle intoa glassy rod that holds together, like alaser beam, and looks heavier, ropier,and wetter than water in a turbulent-

flow stream. “How cool is that,” Fullerrecalled thinking as he watched the filmin class.

For his senior honors thesis, Fullerdecided to build a laminar-flow fountain.He and two other seniors engineered itby running water from a garden hosethrough a large plastic cylinder that wasstuff ed full of drinking straws. As the water passed through the straws, the tur-bulence diminished, and was further qui-

eted as it passed through first one smallmesh screen and then a smaller one, sothat when it emerged from the nozzle itflowed in a smooth rod. A friend’s fatheragreed to install the thesis fountain—the world’s first permanent laminar foun-tain—in the atrium of his new officebuilding, the Conquistador, in Salt LakeCity.

After two years of graduate school atStanford, Fuller applied for a job at Dis-ney, and for his interview he took along

slides he had made of his laminar foun-tain. “They looked at it and said, ‘Wedefinitely want to hire you—we’re justnot sure as what,’ ” Fuller recalled. He be-came an “Imagineer,” charged with developing new ideas for Disney’s themeparks. After a year of working on rides atDisneyland, he moved to Epcot Center,in Orlando, the park intended to embody Walt Disney’s dream of science, technol-ogy, and design working together to cre-ate a better world. Fuller designed the

first “leapfrog fountain,” in which lami-nar streams jump from one raised planterto another. To complete his work in timefor Epcot’s opening, Fuller did not sleepfor the last four days. Later, his col-leagues had buttons printed that said, “Ikept up with Mark Fuller at Epcot.”

In 1983, Fuller and two partnersstarted WET. Fuller was still at Disney,but he left the following year to work fulltime on creating Fountain Place, in Dal-las. The company struggled at first; at one

point, Fuller had maxed out thirteencredit cards. In 1995, he got a call fromSteve Wynn, the casino developer. Wynn

was planning the Bellagio, and he wantedit to be a place that would “make you for-get you were in Vegas,” he told me re-cently, in a hoarse voice during an early-

morning phone call. “I thought an in-credible fountain could do that. My land-scape guy, Don Brinkerhoff , said, ‘Yougot to look at this fountain that this kiddid at Disney.’ So we went down thereand looked at it. It wasn’t a big thing, butMark figured out how to do the laminarstreams, and how to light them, and I was

pretty impressed with that. So I flew himto Vegas and took him to dinner, and Isaid, ‘Can you build me something that’snever been seen before?,’ and I told himthe scale I wanted it on, and that it had toall be coördinated with music—the sound,light, and water all together, a perfectunion. Fuller said he could do it. He saidhe could make the lake dance and throw

water up two hundred feet in the air.”“I assured Steve that it would be like

nothing else on earth,” Fuller told me.

He got the job. To create the Bellagio fountains, Fuller

employed water cannons he had inventedthat use compressed air to fire shots of wa-ter—“Shooters,” he called them. They were far more efficient than mechanicalpumps at lifting large amounts of waterinto the air. He also realized that heneeded to invent a new kind of nozzle, with a broad range of motion. To visual-ize the shapes that such a nozzle wouldmake, he had one of his engineers put on

a raincoat and hold a hose in diff erentpositions over his head, while he twirledaround on a spinning chair. Fuller cameup with an underwater robotic arm that was attached to a nozzle and could movein three dimensions. The nozzle couldsweep forward and back, creating fanshapes, and it could twirl, creating cones;the engineers, by changing the positionof the nozzle and the velocity and accel-eration of the water, could create count-less variations. Fuller called the units

“oarsmen,” because of the rowing motionthe nozzles made.

A robotics company called Sarcos, inSalt Lake City, agreed to build the oars-men for twelve thousand dollars apiece,but, after unforeseen design and engi-neering challenges, they ended up cost-ing more than twice that amount. Fullerborrowed as much money as he could tomake up the diff erence. When it lookedas if he might go bankrupt, Wynnloaned him the two million dollars it

would cost to finish the job, on condi-tion that Fuller refrain from building afountain for any other casino in Las


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Vegas until he had repaid him. (Fullerpaid back the loan several years ago.)

A WET designer named Claire Kahnchoreographed one of the first pro-grams, to Aaron Copland’s arrange-ment of “Simple Gifts,” and Ortega didanother, to “Singin’ in the Rain.” Ortegatold me, “You try to make the water

hear the music.” The Shooters fire tothe staccato beats in the music, and theoarsman sweep through the legatomovements. The choreographers first worked up short sequences on the com-puter, using a program called Virtual-

WET, and then “put it on the lake,” Or-tega said. Unlike dancers, he added,“fountains don’t talk back, but they dobreak down sometimes.”

When Wynn saw the fountain for thefirst time, in 1998, performing Ortega’s

piece, he was overcome: “I’ll never forgetthat moment. Within sixty seconds Iknew—this is it. It was the most incred-ible feeling.” Since then, millions havebeen similarly moved by the Bellagiofountains. “There’s something extraordi-narily emotional about that fountain,”Ortega told me. “The water is so alive—it is life. And people get very emotionalaround it. You see people crying—justoverwhelmed by the spectacle.”

The WET campus comprises eleven

buildings in an industrial sectionon the border of Burbank, near theairport. The building that houses the

WET design staff looks like any busy ar-

chitect’s office: the designers, many of whom trained as architects, are seatedbefore computer screens, using softwareto produce geometric forms and shapes, which will be rendered not in concreteand steel but in water. WET designersoften visualize the individual nozzlesin a fountain, Fuller told me, as pixels.

“We work with basic forms,” Fuller said.“Lines and circles, mainly. We don’tmake, say, cloverleafs. Out of these sim-ple geometries we create complex pat-terns, but it always starts with simplic-ity.” It is up to the engineers and thefabricators to design and build theplumbing, wiring, circuitry, and soft- ware that will sculpt the water into theshapes the designers have conjured up. And because a Fuller fountain isn’t asculpture with water—the water is the

sculpture—everything else in the foun-tain is hidden, usually under the wateritself, which adds immensely to the en-gineering challenges.

In the Idea Playground, WET ’sR. & D. lab, men in white lab coats tryto make water do things it has neverdone before. Water is heavy, and foun-tain designers through the ages havebeen preoccupied with finding ways tocounter the eff ects of gravity. The an-cient Romans figured out how to use

gravity to their advantage, by forcing water into fountains from high aque-ducts; the weight of the down-rushing water created the head. During the Re-naissance, the ancients’ hydraulic innova-

tions were rediscovered, and the Popesrestored and embellished the fountains ofRome, commissioning the great sculp-tors of the day, who used water to givetheir figures the liquid glue of life. In thenineteenth century, mechanical waterpumps began to be used in fountains, which made fountaineering easier, and

today anyone with an electrical outlet canrun one in his back yard. But in form andfunction mechanical fountains didn’tchange much until WET came along andinvented the compressed-air cannons toconquer the problem of gravity. WETmakes five standard sizes—NanoShoot-ers, which have a range of up to six feet;MicroShooters, which can go up tosixty feet; SuperShooters, a hundredand twenty feet; HyperShooters, twohundred and forty feet; and Xtream-

Shooters, which can fire water five hun-dred feet into the air.

Outside the lab, I saw a demonstra-tion of a SuperShooter. Its barrel wasabout twelve feet tall, held upright bymetal supports. One of the lab workersused a remote control to fire the Shooter, while we stood back. A shudderingboom was followed by a crackling sound,as the water flew high overhead.

“That’s the sound of water breakingthe sound barrier,” Fuller said, looking

pleased.Nearby was a mockup of an ice foun-

tain, one of the water features that WET developed for the Las Vegas City Cen-ter, an $8.5-billion hotel and enter-tainment complex that opened in De-cember. Out of an opaque black pool,columns of ice up to two feet wide ap-pear, illuminated by colored lights, ris-ing at varying speeds until they are ashigh as fifteen feet. “It’s supposed to besomewhere between the column in the

Stanley Kubrick movie ‘2001’ and a bigPopsicle,” Fuller told me. As the ice col-umns emerge from the pool, they aresculpted by tiny, high-powered water jets. “It’s like a dot-matrix printer,”Fuller said. “It lets you create all thesecomplicated shapes.” Every so often, theice columns are retracted and extrudedagain, and sculpted into diff erentshapes.

Some of the most beautiful eff ects Isaw in the lab were the quietest. I watched

a three-quarter-inch-wide laminar tubeof water transcribe a fifteen-foot arc without breaking up, lit from within by a“Those are fees incurred for requesting an explanation of your fees.”


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colored beam of fibre-optic light thatbends with the water. When that streamobliquely struck another stream, a showerof colored water sparks bloomed.

Although water is WET’s stock-in-trade, the firm dabbles in fire, too. “Thereis a lot of demand for fire in the East,”Fuller said. I saw several fire-and-water

mockups, including a twister of water ina large glass tube, which had fire run-ning through the middle of it. Anotherfire feature sprayed a mixture of naturalgas and water. One of the lab techniciansput his hand into the plume, explainingthat as long as you kept your palm per-pendicular to the floor you wouldn’t getburned, because the water carries the fireover your hand. “But if you put it flat you’d fry,” he said.

The new Revson Fountain was con-structed entirely on site at WET, asare all the company’s fountains, withprecision German steel-cutting toolsoperated by WET employees. “Out-sourcing wouldn’t make sense for us,”Fuller said, “because with this kind of work there are so many small changesto make along the way.” The fountainhas three hundred and seventeen com-puterized jets, some of which produceturbulent, frothy water, and others glassy

waterspouts. Jets are arranged in tworings around the perimeter of the foun-tain, with radial arms leading to a centralcircular mass of more jets. These are runby twenty-four water pumps. (The oldRevson had a total of three pumps.) Dis-tributed evenly among the jets are thirty-six MicroShooters.

WET also designed the new pumproom, which is beneath the plaza, and which contains, among other things,huge air tanks for the MicroShooters,

built of high-grade steel in order to con-tain the air inside, whose pressure is ahundred pounds per square inch. “If oneof these blew, you wouldn’t find muchmore than a teaspoon of us,” Fuller said,during a tour of the facility. The win-dowless area, which takes up twenty-two parking spaces in the undergroundgarage, feels like a submarine, and if you’re down below when one of the Mi-croShooters goes off you feel as if you were in battle. (The fountain techni-

cians wear ear protection.) A WET choreographer named Peter

Kopik designed two programs for the

fountain. There is a daytime program—a sedate, ninety-minute sequence ofslowly morphing geometric shapes—anda shorter, more dramatic evening pro-gram, in which the MicroShooters aredeployed along with the jets. The day-time program will run most of the time,and the dramatic program is intended to

run later, as the plaza begins to fill withticket holders.

Fuller seems a little frustrated at theconstraints Lincoln Center placed onhim to insure that the fountain wasn’ttoo “Vegas.” “Whatever that means,” hesaid. “You know the expression ‘sugar-coating the lemon’?” he asked me, with asomewhat rueful expression. “I feel like we’re lemon-coating the sugar.” Neitherhis oarsmen nor the big Shooters hadmade it into the final design; incorporat-

ing the thirty-six MicroShooters hadrequired a certain sleight of hand. “Noone told us we couldn’t use them,” hesaid.

The new fountain débuted on Octo-ber 1st, and the daytime program hasbeen running since then. When the jetsare all on, they produce a mighty col-umn of water that slowly rises to a heightof twelve feet. When the column is at itsgreatest height, there are four hundredand seventy-five gallons of water in the

air, all of it recycled. The glossier streamsin the middle can be glimpsed throughthe stalks of froth on the outside. Espe-cially after dark, people are drawn tothe column of water, mesmerized by thetwo hundred and seventy-two L.E.D.lights that make the water glow white(colored gels could be added to the lights,but that would presumably be consideredinappropriate) and hushed by the soundof the cascade.

The dramatic program, however,

has not gone off nightly. Adjustmentsneeded to be made to the wind sen-sors that had been installed around theplaza. While WET has mastered water,and is working on fire, it is powerlessagainst the eff ects of wind. With somuch water propelled so high in theair, even a slight breeze could pushsome of it beyond the rim of the Rev-son’s basin. A dousing might feel goodon a hot summer day, but it wouldprobably not delight an elderly couple

dressed for the ballet on a chilly fallevening. The fountain as trickster isone thing; the fountain as potential

lawsuit is another. It seems that Lin-coln Center, in spite of its best eff orts,might have got more fountain than itbargained for.

I was finally able to see the dramaticprogram on a cool, almost breezelessevening at the end of October. KerryMadden, Lincoln Center’s taciturn vice-

president of concert halls and opera-tions, whose responsibilities includeoverseeing the fountain, met me in theplaza. He was on his cell phone, sur-rounded by three cops, and they all scru-tinized the fountain as though lookingfor signs of suspicious intent. Findingnone, Madden and I went upstairs tothe outdoor balcony of Avery FisherHall, while, below, a guard steered peo-ple away from the downwind side of thefountain, just in case.

“Let’s go with the show,” Maddensaid tersely into his phone, speaking tothe operator in the pump room.

The show began with the rising col-umn seen in the daytime program, butsoon the first shots appeared, and thebooming of the air cannons was heard,faintly at first, and then louder, as theshots climbed higher. As the crest ofone shot began to fall back to earth, itstruck the next shot, on its way up, andcreated globes, like Japanese lanterns

made of water, momentarily suspendedin the air.

“That’s about twenty feet,” Maddensaid, when the first shots went off .Down in the plaza, a crowd was gather-ing. “That’s about forty,” he said, excite-ment breaking into his no-nonsensetone.

Then there was the biggest boom yet, and all the Shooters went off atonce, sending water sixty feet into theair—almost as high as the surrounding

buildings—and as the main plume arceddown there was a loud slapping soundof water landing outside the basin, onthe plaza itself.

But nobody minded. When the vol-ley ended, and the fountain’s watersabruptly disappeared, there was a short,stunned silence, followed by bellowsof approval from the crowd, which were, under the circumstances, entirelyappropriate.

Web dummy web tage tktk text dummy.


17/26

JUlY AUGUST 2 1


18/26

~ N f ~ R l l

PublicatIOn of

the tanlotd lumni

ssociiltion

COVER

STORY

The omeback orals

Around the world. cor,,1 reefs are

dying

as

oceans warm. But near ill

tiny

island in the

South Pacific. researchers have

diSCOViC red

corals that have

adapted

to survive. They

could be t he key to saVing ill verdant sea.

The

Iranian Optimist

Professor Abbas Milani spent months

in Iran s most notoriOuS prison and was

chased

from

his

home count ry by the

intolerance of clerical

rule.

Now working

to

educate students and

policy

makers

alike. he believes

the

current regime in

Tehran is doomed.

and

that

its

demise

may

come

sooner than many think.

WH OA

The shimmering

spiraling,

gravity defying

water

installations created by Mark Fuller,

MS 78. and his company have not

only

beautified resorts around the world

they

haye established a

new

genre of art.

Facing the Heat

The already fractious debate over climate

change

has

boiled

over in recent months

wIth Ihreats

and accusations against

SCH 1ltlStS.

ne target has been Professol

Stephen

Schneider,

who

says

the public is

being

snookered by a radical fringe intent

on

obscuring the facts.

ON

THE

COVER; Manrle

ecologist

Steve Pailimbi

in a

lagoon of f the

Islarld

o f O f

II.

Photograph by

Dan

Griffin

ST S fO I l D

I


19/26


20/26


21/26


22/26

FOUNTAINHEAD: uller

cenler personally

oversaw construc-

tion

of

the fountain li t the Burjl


23/26

helped design the Bellagio installation

from

the ground

up.

After

5 years with

the

company, she still finds it astonishing

that she began a career in graphic design

and became, among

other

things, a water

choreographer.

[

ARLY ON Fuller realized that to do

all that he envisioned

he

would

have to ge t into th e business of

inventing.

I Ie

holds more than 50 patents

forwa[Cr control, air compression and spe

cialty lighting.

wET's recently revamped research and

development lab-dubbed the Idea Play

ground-is housed in 3 immaculate

square ftet

of

industrial space located

across the street from

the

west runway

of

Burbank's Bob 1·lopeAirport.

This

poses

some interesting challenges. The vertical

power ofWET's nozzles is such that we

call the FAA before we test t h e m ~ Fuller

says with an impish grin. As it happens

his jets travel at speeds faster than his

neighbor's.

The startling

crack

or boom

that accompanies thewater burst from the

larger Shooters comes from breaking [he

sound barrier.

Initially, WET Outsourced its manufac

turing

to

China or India. But Fuller found

he couldn't adequatelycontrol


24/26

ANN MARSH, SS,;lflu:nttr;n

on

a(h, (A/if.

T

TO 'HATrR.'

iT

walls in hallways

and gathering spaces

to

capture

ideas

before

they evaporate. In this innovative

space-and at

WET satellite

offices around the world-Fuller and a small army of designers,

architects, engineers and scientists seek heretofore unimagina

ble ways

of

harnessing

the

elements.

U{At Disney

Imagineering] we used

to

say you

don t

rest

on

your laurels, says Sklar. U\'


25/26

TH rls

CI

WEDNF.SDAY, AUGUsr 26. ZOO9

•

•

•

BEN

RATLIFF

Why

are

so

many

Iood

jazz gigs

led

by

dnlmmen

these

days? Possibly It's

just labor logic:

the star syslem

IlalI br0

ken doWn, thecirtuil basshrunk

and

here

are fewer high·profile working

bands led

by

great front·line

soloists - saxophonists,

trumpeten.luitarists.

The

burden tobe charlsmalic hllll'

drained away fromjaua bit,

IItU5IC

IIEY'EW too, for betteror worse. When

a

drummer

leadsa band,you

no Ionlerexpect Buddy Rich or Max

Roach buttonholingyou with vinuosity

or b r i l ~ n t improvising

and

making a

special case for why. rhythm-seclion

musician should

be

setting the ordi·

nance.

You expecl a lot ofsublimationto

the I ~ a t e r good.

Neal Smilh,a New York drummer In

his mitl-30s Who has playedin Cyrus

Chestnut's

band

for the last 10 years, led

a new

IrouP

at Smallson Monday, re

cordlnl four sets over two nightsfor a

album. Atlhe core

of

theband Is the

trio of Mr. Smith ondrums. Dezron

Doug.Lason

bassand

Mulgrew

Miller,.

wiseelder,on

piano.

And hen there

were satelliteelements. rotating

in and

outd the sets: the saxClphoniSl

SteYli

Wilson, the guitarisl Mark Whitfil ld

and

the saxophonist: Eric

Alennder.

Mr.Smith.

c:alIin

heIunes. Il l>

nonsense

posI-bop mythm. the hard

centerd jazz since he late lfl5Os. And

he barely caUed

attentionto

himself.

Mr. MilIeI , whose name helped pad ;

the house on

Monday, US\OaIIy

performs

as

• bandleader, going throu&h

Ills

own

tunes, exercising

aulhority

and ranae

and

oc:casiooalbunts d speed But

Cor\liIuled

Oft

f Q e:

oS

Living Large

The authorSusan

Orlean reviews

Frank

Bruni's memoir,

~ B o m

Round, which

chronicleshis tor·

tured relationship

with food

•

PJJ:,'.£4.

INSIDE

ByMICHAELCIEPLV

LOS ANGELES - Ina favorite movie

plotline, viClimized small

fry strike back

against the operators of a corrupt and

heartless system. As In -Erin Brocko

vich.

Usually,lhough, Hollywood iSl'l't cast

as

the

villain.

On

Tuesday some

78

r esiden l$ d •

long·tel'l'lKare unit

and

associated

1 101-

pita

in

he San

fernando

Valley - an

operntion t ha t h as tended

QI elderly

I'l'IO\Iie

stars. characler

actors,


26/26

THE NEW VORK TIMES.

WEDNESDAY,

AUGUSr26, 2009

,

.

.

,

I

t '

•

.:

'

.

,

J

,.

Above, from left:

Peter

Kopik

ofWET, thedesign

firm

that

i.

choreographing

the walerefferodU(l S.'

Other films Ihat have featured

the fountain In(lude Ghostbust

ers and Woody Allen's Thlr.e Ihe

Money and Run and Annie

Hall. It'sa pla

Mon-C4 Waters Edge - The Connection Between Urban Fountains and People

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Transcript of Mon-C4 Waters Edge - The Connection Between Urban Fountains and People