How are Flowforms designed?

(also view www.designforlife.co.nz)

Our design process requires an intimate scientific and artistic understanding of water movement, plus the working knowledge of how to create surfaces for water to move downwards yet upstream, thereby creating a figure-of-eight streaming rhythm! Water is complete when in a circular or spherical form and Flowforms allow this to happen while retaining streaming forward movement.

We pride ourselves that our Flowforms' sculptural quality is in harmony with its water movement. In fact, this liquid flow pattern effectively gives rise to the sculptural shape through the scientific imagination of our designer. If water had hands, we believe it would make sculptures for itself similar to ours. In a real sense, water is actually the artist and the understanding experienced designer its interpreter. This work is ongoing of course!

Making a Flowform is akin to making a musical instrument. An instrument may look beautiful, but does it sound good? Rhythmic water movement, light and splash is the beautiful music in our Flowforms. Flowforms available in this website have been designed to create active steep cascades, or peaceful flowing streams and welling springs, with calm and gentle flows through to powerful, surging wave runs.

Iain Trousdell's designs have drawn on the amazing richness of New Zealand's primeval forest streams and rocky coastline. His sculptures have a vibrancy which people worldwide associate with the art and nature of Aotearoa.

He has also worked to assimilate the culture of the East, and several of his recent Flowform sculptures have a Tao harmonic quality hidden within them.

Next Steps in the Process

Once the original Flowform has been made, with water running through clay or plasticene sculptures, a plaster mould is taken, handcrafted further and then a plaster cast taken from that. This mastercast is then worked on until satisfactory and then our high quality gelcoated aluminium trihydrate moulds are made.

Using a unique patented method, we create from these highly crafted moulds our world famous, beautiful Flowforms. They are handcrafted to a high quality finish, ready to be sent anywhere on the planet to do their work for water.

Benefits of our beautiful Authentic Stone-Effect material

Our unique and beautiful Authentic Stone-Effect material has many advantages over Fabricated Stone, Caststone or Concrete.

Liquid jades Black granites

This gorgeous material is one quarter the weight of stone, extremely long lasting, very strong, easily cleaned, and doesn't wear away, while remaining stable in very high and low temperatures, and easily kept beautiful with minimum effort! We have granite, jade and marble effects available. With this material, smaller pumps also give the experience of higher waterflow. Our material is inert and hygienic, not reducing any of the beneficial properties of the water.

Concretes and fabricated stones tend to stain with the small holes in concrete harbouring algaes and microbes, and they also gather ugly mineral scales. Concrete and caststone give of a whitish lime-bloom which mars the colour and surface cracks generally evolve. Erosion of the surfaces can become an issue as does brittleness, and the heavy weight makes freight and installation more difficult and costly. Concrete tends to capture oxygen out of the water and adds calcium to it, hardening the mineral content.

Accessories and Landscape Design

As well as our Flowforms, we have designed associated foundations and plumbing plans, and also can offer help with Kiwi watergarden concepts.

Major Design Projects

You can see major public waterscapes that we have created here. If you want or know of any such projects happening anywhere, do let us know. This is how we have landed half of the projects done so far!

We are keen to move beyond New Zealand, and have the capability to design and professionally project manage any exterior or interior project of any size anywhere in the world.

For further information please view: www.designforlife.co.nz