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Traffic, airport security, rental cars, room rates – who needs the hassles of travel when you can have all the finesse and flair of a high-end resort in your own backyard? Homeowners are craving dynamic, multiuse outdoor spaces that go well beyond a pool and some patio furniture. That means elegant stone terraces for outdoor breakfast or tea; screened porches for use when it’s too rainy, hot, cool, or buggy in the open air; pavilions for entertaining; fire pits or fireplaces; outdoor kitchens; and perhaps cozy little spa grottoes with trickling waterfalls.
Pools remain central to the design, but experts say it’s becoming less important for homeowners to have an oversized, show-stopping pool than to have a variety of places to lounge, dine, soak, entertain, and even work beside the pool. The square footage of the pool itself is smaller than it was a decade ago, says Don Gwiz, vice president of Lewis Aquatech, but to accommodate today’s range of outdoor activities, “we’re doing more site planning than ever before.”
Using the Whole Space
For one project in Potomac, MD’s Avenel community, the homeowners aimed to create a resort area with all the trimmings, but were limited because the lot itself wasn’t enormous and there was a retaining wall on the back edge of the property. Size was not a limiting factor, however, in the way this project accommodates many different functions – the builders just made sure to use all available space and give each little nook its own pleasant view.
“It was a lot to pack into a compact lot,” says Steve Kirstein, principal of BOWA Builders Inc., but that pressure is not visible in the finished project. Rather, it’s a soothing, free-form pool with a cozy spa at the top of a waterfall. Completing the project are a porch with kitchen (Kirstein says these are skyrocketing in popularity), a fire pit, multiple dining areas, and an expansive balcony off the owners’ bedroom. Warm-toned Copper Bay stone was used throughout, contributing to that resort feel. “It’s a recreation destination – it has all the pieces,” Kirstein says.
Blend With Surroundings
Homeowners are taking landscaping cues from commercial resort properties, but that doesn’t mean they look commercial. To the contrary – the trend is toward integrating elements innocuously with their surroundings, as Landscape Architect Daniel Robey did with this vanishing-edge pool for McHale Landscape Design Inc. The edge drops about 7 feet into a basin surrounded by boulder outcroppings and carefully chosen plants. The jet fountains are controlled by remote.
Nooks and Overlooks
In the Great Falls, VA, project, Doug Deluca, principal of Federal Stone and Brick, created an airy pavilion that goes the extra mile – beyond the outdoor fireplace and television, the pocket barn doors and cedar roof help the project feel like a continuance from the rest of the house as well as a departure. That’s key in such projects, says Deluca – the ability to feel both at home and away from it all in one space.
“Architecture needs to be in close proximity to the pool because pools are so flat and linear. There needs to be something of interest,” Deluca says, to help the pool area feel like more than a hole in the ground. Structures like these, he says, add “some weight and comfort” to the space.
