Contemporary Garden Decoration: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Roots
Contemporary Garden Decoration: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Roots The incredible architecture of a fountain allows it to provide clean water or shoot water high into air for dramatic effect and it can also serve as an excellent design feature to enhance your home.The central purpose of a fountain was originally strictly functional.
Inhabitants of cities, townships and small towns used them as a source of drinking water and a place to wash, which meant that fountains had to be linked to nearby aqueduct or spring. Used until the nineteenth century, in order for fountains to flow or shoot up into the air, their source of water such as reservoirs or aqueducts, had to be higher than the water fountain in order to benefit from gravity. Fountains were not only used as a water source for drinking water, but also to decorate homes and celebrate the designer who created it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often used by Romans to decorate their fountains. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden designers included fountains in their designs to re-create the gardens of paradise. Fountains enjoyed a significant role in the Gardens of Versailles, all part of French King Louis XIV’s desire to exert his power over nature. To mark the entryway of the restored Roman aqueducts, the Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries commissioned the building of baroque style fountains in the spot where the aqueducts entered the city of Rome
Urban fountains built at the end of the 19th century served only as decorative and celebratory ornaments since indoor plumbing provided the necessary drinking water. Impressive water effects and recycled water were made possible by replacing the force of gravity with mechanical pumps.
Modern fountains are used to adorn community spaces, honor individuals or events, and enhance recreational and entertainment events.
Did You Know How Technical Designs of Fountains Became Known?
Did You Know How Technical Designs of Fountains Became Known? Spreading pragmatic hydraulic knowledge and fountain design ideas throughout Europe was accomplished with the printed documents and illustrated publications of the time.
An unnamed French water feature designer came to be an internationally celebrated hydraulic innovator in the later part of the 1500's. His expertise in developing gardens and grottoes with built-in and imaginative water fountains began in Italy and with mandates in Brussels, London and Germany. The text, “The Principles of Moving Forces,” written towards the end of his lifetime in France, turned into the definitive writing on hydraulic mechanics and engineering. Detailing modern hydraulic systems, the publication also modernized key hydraulic breakthroughs of classical antiquity. Archimedes, the inventor of the water screw, had his work showcased and these included a mechanical way to move water. Sunlight warming liquid in a couple of vessels concealed in a room adjacent to an ornamental water feature was presented in one illustration. The end result: the water fountain is triggered by the heated liquid expanding and ascending up the piping. Pumps, water wheels, water attributes and backyard pond styles are documented in the publication.