Outdoor water features are useful in both public and private surrounds. In city parks or gardens than can occupy areas that allow for recreation and the circulation of air. For example a like in the middle of a city can be used for recreation. Boating, jogging and exercise can take place around the artificial expanse, absorbing many people in the illusions of space. Such features have been part of great cities for centuries.
For lively and reflective minds there are symbols of refreshment, beauty and replenishment. This is why crystal streams flow from urns held aloft by beautiful marble maidens when it is fresh and potable. When it is sewage it spouts from the mouths of gargoyles like ugly vomit. In either case the human mind plays about it.
Such psychological effects are unsurprising when one reflects on the relief that is gained when a thirst is slaked. After trudging through dry mountains or desert sands there is little that can equate with the pleasure of finding a cool pool and sinking into it.
This ecstasy must be deeply rooted in the human psyche from the days when when all people were hunter gatherers without plumbing in their caves. Though modern plumbing has removed both the pain of not having drink and the pleasure of finding it there are dim memories encoded in our genes that are awakened when we stand beside a fountain in a busy city street. The surrounds suddenly seem less gritty and grimy.
In private environments such as gardens and even roof tops water can be used for aesthetic, and hence emotional and psychological benefits. This has been recognized since early civilization. In the eighteen and nineteenth century landscaped estates and grand houses were erected, often with the profits made from slavery or plunder. Aesthetic effects were important. It was considered important to wed nature and art by diverting streams to form lakes and waterfalls visible from the front windows of gracious rooms.
Social and economic conditions have altered considerably since those days of gracious living for the very few. Most people have been elevated by education but remain economically constrained. They have to do with houses like hutches and small patches of earth. However, for educated and civilized people these circumstances are simply challenges to create high end effects and illusions of space where there is little in reality.
Outdoor water features can play important parts in aesthetic endeavors. A corner between two blank concrete walls can become a nook with a fountain giving out splashing sounds that soothe. The pool beneath the cascade, fed with a constant supply of circulating streams, can be a lake to its tiny inhabitants who live out their lives beneath fringes of ferns, quite unaware of being circumscribed.
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