Two new Courts have been added to the Carlsbad Company Stores retail center in Carlsbad, California. As a gathering and identifying point within the [primary] court, the project’s water feature was conceived to draw attention and then to entertain shoppers. The feature’s base and pool display extraordinarily rich and detailed patterns, all expressed in brightly colored and gold tessera tile. The form of the feature is quatrefoil, raised to bench height, encompassing both a central tiled pool and smaller water basins nestled within the surrounding bench itself. Springing from these shallow indentations are clear, laminar arcs or threads. The streams, with their laminar character, can be made to leap whimsically through the air and entertain in acrobatic style.

Occasionally, and intentionally, they collide in mid air, the water arcs then reducing to showers of droplets which catch and re-radiate the intense white light with which they are illuminated at night.

In the central pool itself are eight columns of water that pulse skyward to create yet more changing choreographic routines. The design intent of coupling the differences in water character—the glassiness of the laminars with the froth of the bursting vertical columns—was to enable a wide range of water expressions that could at times be low key or even mischievous, while at other times they loft vigorous white watery plumes against the coastal blue sky.