“You can’t be a master of your profession without knowing the history of that profession,” Kate Wiseman states. She firmly believes this applies to pool builders and designers, which is why she has been teaching GENESIS D280: History of Pools and Water Features for the past three years.
“The more I teach this class, the more I realize that fundamentally, the reason we need to do this is in order to build and maintain credibility with clients. None of us can afford for our clients to know more about our subject matter than we do,” explains Wiseman, MLA, principal landscape designer for Sage Outdoor Designs in San Diego, Calif. When your client mentions a famous pool or water feature they have seen, it’s just good business practice to know what your clients are talking about.
This is particularly true for high-end clients who are more likely to travel the world extensively and to visit exclusive resorts. It’s important for you as the builder/designer to recognize world- famous water features, and to know the names of different architectural styles and what those styles include. That way, when your client says how much they loved the French Formal gardens at Versailles on their recent trip to France, you can ask pointed questions to determine which features they most want to bring to their backyard design.
Wiseman’s History of Pools and Water Features course is divided into four sections: ancient, historic, 20th century, and today. She highlighted some of her favorite projects from each period, as well as what her students tend to respond to the most.
Ruins of the Baths of Diocletian in Rome. These were the largest of the imperial baths, fed by a 57-mile-long aqueduct which delivered water for over five centuries. The aqueduct flow was powered by simple gravity which thus operated 24/7.
ANCIENT
Wiseman’s favorite pool from the ancient civilizations period is the 5,000-year-old Great Bath at Mohenjo- Daro, part of the Indus Valley Civilization that falls within today’s India and Pakistan. “One thing that shocked me when researching for this course was how old some of these items are, and yet how much they look like swimming pools to us with our modern eyes,” she says. The Indus Valley Civilization had cities with ritual- type bathing pools and underground plumbing, “far older and far more advanced than I had ever been taught in school.”
She finds that her students are often impressed by the huge scale of the ancient Roman baths. By the 4th century AD, there were 1,000 public baths in Rome alone. “It’s interesting to look at these from a historic perspective,” Wiseman says. “At the time, the Romans were more interested in what we consider a therapeutic Spa today: different baths with a variety of water temperatures, steam rooms, and rooms for exfoliating with cleansing oils. The baths were a big part of ancient Roman social life.” One of the largest, the Baths of Diocletian, was built around 300 AD and is far more than just a pool, it was a huge complex spanning 32 acres and featured a main pool that was 37,600 square feet.
HISTORIC
Wiseman’s students enjoy discussing features in her course that they have already seen in real life. The most commonly visited among her students is the Trevi Fountain in Rome, but her personal favorite to teach is the water features of the Palace of Versailles in France. “There are so many fascinating water features there,” she says.
At Versailles, the part that often interests her students the most is actually the machine that brought the water from the Seine River up more than 160 meters to the palace, called the Marly Machine. “For the 1600s, it was quite a piece of technology — the largest integrated machine at the time. But it was so loud, you really couldn’t get anywhere near it.” In her course, she discusses the original plumbing and mechanics, and the history of Versailles’ water features from the time they were built to how they function and look today.
Keller Fountain in downtown Portland, Ore., “a good example of how you can create a very naturalistic feature using modern design language, materials, and shapes without resorting to any typically natural materials.
20TH CENTURY
The Keller Fountain in Portland, Ore., was built in the 1970s and is “a very interesting case in being an attractive nuisance,” according to Wiseman. The fountain is the centerpiece of a public plaza and people are allowed in the fountain itself, but one reason that it works so well is because “it looks fun to play with but also looks dangerous, so people stay vigilant,” she explains, with relatively few incidents of people injuring themselves while in or on the fountain.
Wiseman likes to teach about this fountain because “it’s interesting for what it looks like, the history of it, and how people use it,” she says. The Keller Fountain “is a good example of how you can create a very naturalistic feature using modern design language, materials, and shapes without resorting to any typically natural materials,” she says. “It’s all done out of poured-in-place concrete, but gives the impression of a natural waterfall.”
Her students are intrigued by the Garden of Allah in Hollywood, which was built by silent film star Alla Nazimova in the 1920s and closed in the late 1950s. Nazimova built 30 guesthouses on her property that were rented to dozens of household-name Hollywood stars over the decades. It had one large pool that was supposed to be in the shape of the Black Sea. “It’s not unique-looking by modern standards,” Wiseman says, “but it has beautiful architecture and the design is appropriate to California.”
She explained that “this design is fantastic because the pool is part of a bigger picture — not because the pool itself is so showy or amazing or detailed.” In terms of relating it to today’s designs, Wiseman emphasized that many high-end clients appreciate the subtle and the quiet. They are looking for a calm and peaceful escape, rather than entertainment and excitement.
Rock pool at the Banyan Tree AlUla in Saudi Arabia. In the Saudi Arabian desert, water is only found after a rainfall, when it fills valleys or ravines and creates what is called a wadi. “This resort’s primary swimming pool design mimics those natural seasonal swimming holes.
TODAY
The pools and water features from today that Wiseman chooses to share in her course are primarily “ultra-high- end resorts” from around the world. Her favorite is Banyan Tree AlUla in Saudi Arabia. “This resort emphasizes the idea of subtle, quiet, private, and integrated into natural surroundings,” she explains. “The pool flawlessly fits into where it is.”
In the Saudi Arabian desert, water is only found after a rainfall, when it fills valleys or ravines and creates what is called a wadi. “This resort’s primary swimming pool design mimics those natural seasonal swimming holes,” she says.
One of the more divisive pools shown in the course is the Amangiri Resort in Canyon Point, Utah. People either love it or hate it. “The swimming pool is fantastic because it has a large buttress of sandstone that appears to come into the swimming pool — they actually built the swimming pool around it,” she explains. “It makes it look like the pool is part of the natural world but in this really modern, clean, interesting way.”
Some students find it ugly either because it pairs minimalist modern with a rugged desert landscape, or because it has no bright colors or showy features, but Wiseman uses this pool design as an important reminder to her students that “what you like and what your clients like are not the same. It’s our job to give them what they like, not what we like. A key part of this class is to give you a lot of examples of pools your clients will like.”
DESIGN EDUCATION
GENESIS D280: History of Pools and Water Features is one of the required courses to earn the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance (PHTA) Certified Master
Pool Builder & Design Professional (Master CBP) designation, the fourth and highest level of pool builder certification offered. Wiseman notes that her students need to have at least a basic understanding of architectural styles in order for this course to make sense. She spends time walking students through how different styles relate to each other and how they have changed over time.
Going through the different eras of pools and delving into how the people of those eras used them “lets the students see that what we study in the history portion is absolutely still relevant in modern-day designs, and very much applies to your day-to-day business,” Wiseman says. “In order to really know and understand what your clients want, you need a solid educational base in your field.”
This article first appeared in the March 2025 issue of AQUA Magazine — the top resource for retailers, builders and service pros in the pool and spa industry. Subscriptions to the print magazine are free to all industry professionals. Click here to subscribe.
