Water Music

The fountain architect who gave water a voice.

by John Seabrook January 11, 2010

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John Seabrook, Onward and Upward with the Arts, “Water Music,” The New Yorker, January 11, 2010, p. 36

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Related Links: Video: A look at the Lincoln Center fountain’s starring role in movies over the past four decades.

Keywords: Revson Fountain;; Lincoln Center;; Mark Fuller;; Architects;; WET Design;; Diller Scofidio + Renfro;; Fountains

ABSTRACT: ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about fountain architect Mark Fuller and the renovation of Lincoln Center’s Revson Fountain. When Revson Fountain opened, in April, 1964, it was the most technically advanced fountain New York had ever seen. But over the years the fountain’s power diminished. In 2006, Lincoln Center launched a $1.3-billion redevelopment project, including a plan for a new fountain. The firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the lead designers of the redevelopment plan, proposed bringing in WET Design, the L.A.-based water-features firm, led by Mark Fuller. Fuller, who is fifty-eight, may be the closest thing the world has to a fountain genius. He and his colleagues at WET, which he co-founded in 1983, have brought a new language to fountain architecture by giving the water itself a voice. WET is best known for the fountains at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which Steven Spielberg has called “the greatest single piece of public entertainment on planet Earth.” Mark Fuller attended the University of Utah and went to graduate school at Stanford. He worked at Disneyland for a year before moving to Epcot Center. In 1983, Fuller and two partners started WET. The company struggled at first, and then, in 1995, Fuller got a call from Steve Wynn about the Bellagio. To create the Bellagio fountains, Fuller employed water cannons he had invented, known as Shooters, that use compressed air to fire shots of water. He also invented a new kind of nozzle, called “oarsmen.” The Shooters fire to staccato beats in the music, and the oarsmen sweep through the legato movements. The WET campus comprises eleven buildings in an industrial section on the border of Burbank. WET designers often visualize the individual nozzles in a fountain as pixels. It’s up to the engineers and the fabricators to design and build the plumbing, wiring, circuitry, and software that will sculpt the water into the shapes the designers have conjured up. WET’s designers try to make water do things it’s never done before. The new Revson Fountain was constructed entirely on site at WET, as are all the company’s fountains. The fountain has three hundred and seventeen computerized jets, which are arranged in two rings around the perimeter of the fountain, with radial arms leading to a central circular mass of more jets. A WET choreographer named Peter Kopik designed a daytime and an evening program for the fountain. The new fountain débuted on October 1st, and the daytime program has been running since then. When the jets are all on, they produce a mighty column of water that slowly rises on a height of twelve feet. When the column is at its greatest height, there are four hundred and seventy-five gallons of water in the air. Especially after dark, people are drawn to the column of water, mesmerized by the two hundred and seventy-two L.E.D. lights that make the water glow white.

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