Entryway with Water Feature

Entryway Design with Water Features
Time: 04:10

One of my favorite parts of this house is the entryway, and a lot of thought went into its composition, from the textured walkway in concrete to the landscape rock, which I chose with the owner at a rock quarry, to the gentle water element that's going into the house and later actually goes into the house. The entire composition was one where I was trying to think about creating that kind of space where, when you walk up into the house, that there's a sense of drama, really, and also of shelter. What I tried to do is utilize both the organic elements of, let's say, stone, and something very manmade, steel, working with plastic (this is a carbonite roof) and yet still sticking things like little twigs inside the carbonite so that it filters the light a bit.

In an entryway like this, what I tried to do is make a certain change of elevation. So we deliberately had two steps up and, as you go into the house, then you go back down two steps, and that change of elevation brings in a sense of compression with the canopy above, and then it prepares you for this experience of the open room and this big one, large space.

Feng shui concrete water featureI really wanted to have this big natural stone sort of establish the entryway and let the concrete elements kind of work off of that. I went to a quarry with the owner, and we went through a bunch of rocks and we chose this rock and it was hauled here. And then we had to make sure that in setting the base for it, that this rock could settle whichever way it was going to settle, would be independent of our concrete water piece here. We didn't want one to negatively influence the other. I had to pack in foam around the formwork so that there's a space in between, so the stone can move slightly and not crack or displace the concrete water piece.

With the concrete water piece, we're following the elements of feng shui. Chinese geomancy and fortunes, good fortunes, are always influenced by the flow of the water element into the house. So in this piece right here, the water comes up, it percolates underneath this cover. This green portion of concrete lifts off, and there's a pump inside there and the water comes in and it flows toward the house into a pool and from that pool, it recirculates back over to here. So it's just really a small, closed system and the water actually goes into the house, with this glass separation, and the fish can swim in and out, but a person can't get into the house.

From countertops to floors, fireplaces, walls, you can see that anything is possible with concrete. You can start small and dream big.