Abstract
Who can resist the bubbling sounds, sparkling light, and cooling spray of a water fountain on a hot summer day? The urge to shuck off one’s shoes and wade right in or at least slip a few fingers in the water seems hardwired in our brains regardless of age.
I still recall family outings nearly 60 years ago to see the new fountain at the State Capitol in Olympia, Washington. It was a replica of one in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens with adjustable water jets and colored lights that came to life after dusk. All I knew as a little kid was that this fountain was pure magic, and I sorely needed to touch it (no such luck under my parents’ watchful gaze).
Water has always been a key element of human survival and delight. As Loren Eiseley observed, “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” The editors of Water Fountains in the Worldscape are clearly enthralled by the subject and have created an ambitious anthology that cuts across history, culture, geography, and typology. This is a tall order and the results are mixed but they have done an important service by encouraging readers—some of us for the first time—to think seriously about public fountains within the context of the built environment.
The book’s production was a prolonged labor of love by a small army of volunteers, including the editors, who are all practitioners, scholars, and devotees of water history, management, and research from a range of technical and policy perspectives. The centerpiece is a series of case studies about water fountains in 16 cities around the globe. Most of the examples are located in Europe and the Middle East; two case studies are based in Africa, while China, the United States, Australia, and South America each have one. The geographical distribution depended primarily on the editors’ personal contacts with local contributors who were willing to write case studies and donate their own photographs and illustrations.
The focus of the book is described in the Foreword as “the aesthetics of water fountains” or “how we as humans in various parts of the world have chosen to beautify sources of water . . . humankind transforming nature to create special environments.” Yet the fountains highlighted in several of the case studies seemed at odds with this mission. For instance, the Hammonia Fountain in Hamburg, the Marks Fountain in Pretoria, and the Cogswell Temperance Fountain in Washington, D.C., were portrayed in the text and photographs more as forlorn vestiges of past self-promotion campaigns rather than special environments on their own terms. In the case of the Cogswell Temperance Fountain, the authors claim that it “may have started the trend of providing drinking water fountains in all public places in America.” However, this particular fountain (and similar versions in other cities) was aimed squarely at combating alcohol consumption—the personal lifelong, and notably unpopular, crusade of Dr. Henry D. Cogswell.
The trend toward ubiquitous drinking fountains in the United States began in earnest decades later when two enterprising Americans, Halsey Willard Taylor and Luther Hawes, each invented and began to manufacture modern and more hygienic drinking fountains to combat persistent typhoid fever outbreaks from contaminated water. Mr. Taylor’s father had died in such an outbreak in 1896.
Many of the historical, aesthetic, and cultural aspects of water fountains have been ably covered in other texts, including Fountains: Splash and Spectacle, edited by Marilyn Symmes and published in 1998 by Rizzoli in association with the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, and The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City by Katherine Wentworth Rinne, published in 2010 by Yale University Press. Nevertheless, Water Fountains in the Worldscape adds needed value by offering a much wider geographical range of fountains, unique perspectives by international water experts, and a spirited starting point for further study.
From my vantage, the most interesting case studies were (a) the water fountains of Rome; (b) the Nine-Dragon Fountain of Yuxi City, China; and (c) the sabils—the historic drinking fountains of Jerusalem. Their radically different forms and functions reflect their own deeply rooted cultural values and histories. Yet they all seem to share the same basic mission—to serve the public and honor the past rather than to simply enhance the reputation of long-lost potentates.
While much has already been written about the fountains of Rome, they provide an apt place to begin the case studies because of their monumental beauty, functionality, and profound influence on that city’s history over thousands of years. They have become intrinsic parts of Rome’s identity as well as symbolic links to its past and the gigantic structural, but mostly invisible, system that currently supplies the city’s drinking water. The number of extant fountains in Rome—about 3,000 as of 2008—is both mind-boggling and inspiring.
The Nine-Dragon Fountain is much more mysterious because of its relative obscurity outside of China and unusual form compared to most Western water fountains. The creation of this fountain dates back to the Ming Dynasty and consists of nine continuously flowing natural springs, known in Chinese culture as “dragons,” which feed into large constructed pools and channels in an idyllic naturalized setting surrounded by mountains and forests. Graceful stone bridges, temples, trees, and standing stones further define and embellish the fountain area. The springs, which historically provided irrigation for the region, became part of its religious and cultural iconography and have been regularly visited by the public for more than 600 years.
Jerusalem’s sabils are traditional stone structures built during the Ottoman period—either by the government or private initiatives—to provide free drinking water to the local population and thirsty travelers. This effort corresponded to the Islamic obligation to share water as a gift from God (further emphasized in another case study on water fountains in the City of Tunis); in fact, the word “sabil” also means “the upright and righteous way in which a man should walk with his God and his fellowman.” While the size, shape, and aesthetic features of the sabils vary widely depending on when and where they were built and the resources of their respective builders, they all share certain architectural elements related directly to their historical function and importance.
Following the case studies, editors Ari J. Hynynen, Petri S. Juuti, and Tapio S. Katko, who conceived and organized the book from their home base in Finland, present a comparative analysis that categorizes water fountains throughout the world on the basis of the PESICTEE framework. This includes Political, Economic, Social, Institutional, Cultural, Technological, Environmental, and Esthetic dimensions, which they superimpose on the five interlocking Olympic rings, representing each of the five continents.
This intricate taxonomy felt confusing and contrived but it gave the editors a great pretext to add lots of photographs of intriguing fountains throughout the world. Related commentary on each aspect of the PESICTEE framework was mercifully light but generally interesting. However, the particular fountains used to illustrate each category seemed interchangeable with virtually all the rest, which led me to wonder about the taxonomy’s practical value.
One general impression I took away was that fountains could be magnificent (both large and small) icons that enliven their settings, delight the public, honor and illuminate history, and highlight the importance of the precious fluid they depend on—especially when fountains must be turned off due to drought conditions. They could also be wasteful monstrosities that mirror the egos of past rulers, donors, or developers and bear little connection to the places they inhabit. The book contains examples in both categories, along with many others that fall somewhere in between, although the editors carefully avoid any value judgments—except perhaps by exclusion.
The ever more extravagant and wildly popular digital fountain creations that involve abundant water, music, lights, and sometimes fire—usually the signature of Los Angeles-based Wet Design—and have begun to sprout up in (mostly dry) places such as Las Vegas, Dubai, Melbourne, and Macau, draw no comment. Ironically, the editors include several other casino-based fountains in their “display-of-wealth” section that look surprisingly modest and traditional compared to other fountains in the book, much less than say, Bellagio Las Vegas.
At the conclusion of the comparative analysis section, the editors briefly mention that “a large portion of the people in the global village lack access to safe water and basic sanitation” as a wistful footnote to a long discussion about the positive attributes of water fountains. In the following epilogue section, they also raise the risk of more frequent droughts and energy requirements as factors that “may limit the use of fountains in public places” but take a pass on any further discussion.
I did not expect the editors to seriously address these complex global challenges here but hoped to find a little more discussion about creative uses of water fountains to illuminate and solve basic urban infrastructure problems in an integrated fashion. A tiny cryptic hint of this possibility is offered on page 198 (curiously under the “Esthetics Reasons” section): “The introduction of fountains to wastewater treatment facilities as in Gothenburg, Sweden, represents perhaps the highest level of innovation.”
Perhaps enterprising readers will take this challenge and invent new ways to make fountains into productive components of sustainable urban water, waste, and energy management as well as “oases of enjoyment.”