Increasingly our clients turn to us for design solutions for their yards and properties. It’s an exciting role for us as craftspeople, creating spaces with home-owners, balancing vision, structure and cost. Many of our design solutions turn into ‘design-build’ projects, in which the visions continues to grow as the project evolves This very organic process allows us to respond new ideas, amazing stones and the many opportunities that disguise themselves as problems.

Design can be a baffling topic, fraught with esoteric language and unclear concepts. Really, the design process is essentially a conversation between two or more people who care about the same thing. It’s about what’s needed and wanted, what’s strong and beautiful. Drawings, even just quick pencil sketches, are an important part of the process. A drawing helps people talk about something otherwise unseen.

Every designer has their own unique approach. What follows is just one way to look at all the aspects of a stonework project: line, shape, depth and time are the four dimensions of design.

The first dimension of a stone project is its line, the way it travels on flat ground. This can the snaking lines of a wall running along a driveway or the slow sweep of a trail through a garden. Lines respond to an endless series of influences: the slope of the land, immoveable objects, one’s personal sense of grace and efficiency. Lines can be smooth or jagged, straight or winding, slow or fast.

The second dimension of a masonry project is shape

, the essential element of stone. The variations of stone allow for every project- in fact, for every inch of wall- to be unique. The shape of the stones creates the space between, tracing the joinery like fingers along a map. Shapes are endless.

If line and shape are primarily aesthetic qualities of stone, depth the final season dvd one missed call movie download and time address the strucutral elements of a design.

The third dimension of a stone project is depth, the invisible contours that give walls their life. The endless shapes need to fit together behind the wall’s face. Every stone, every structure has its own way of resting. Understanding that and working with it allows a wall to last for generations.

The fourth dimension of designing a stone project is time ricochet movie download , understanding how a structure will age. Stone measures time as weather. Water is the main concern, but people can be weather too. Will this walkway be exposed to freezing and heaving? What influence will rain and drainage have on the wall? How many kids will run along the top of the wall? How will Mother Nature reclaim her stones?

These concepts build upon each other, but aren’t always in sequence. Sometimes the design process starts with a time consideration, “This wall needs to keep my yard from sliding away, now.” Other times a strong desire for a particular shape and style of stone will dictate other design decisions. Like good design, this concept is always developing, responding to the unique challenges of every project.