Of course, the legacy of fountain design also includes multiple drawings of fountains that were proposed, but never built, and therefore remain purely imaginary conceptions. Occasionally, a never-built drawing serves as a nest of new ideas for succeeding generations. The original fountain designs that never bear fruit often hint at concerns of the designer. A fountain designer might ask specifically, how will the fountain appear in a specific setting? Or how will the fountain structure interact with various water effects? All some designers are concerned with how best can a fountain achieve its symbolic form, a festive spectacle, or is it based in utilitarian function? Almost universally, fountain designers considered design ramifications only after the creative aspects have been addressed. There is no question that fountain designers have always looked to historical precedents as sources for ideas and inventive forms and designs. Bernini's Triton fountain has inspired many artists, fountain designers and architects throughout the millennium.
The Roman architect Marchione was well known for using drawings to develop his fountain designs. In the mid-1700s Marchione received a commission for his first large project, which consisted of the design of a villa and gardens, and fountains for his patron the Cardinal Alessandro Albani. The Villa Albani was intended to showcase the Cardinal splendid collection of classical antiquities. Among Marchione’s accomplished designs for the villa is a drawing for a Pegasus fountain simulating a naturalistic landscape with a statue of a mythical horse tapping its hoof on rocks arched over a stream. This was to be the first fountain based on classical mythology in the area.
A contemporary of Marchione, an 18th-century architect named Giuseppe Barberi, received few actual commissions, but unleashed a torrent of restless artistic energy in fluid applications and fountain designs which never left pen and paper. Among his many fountain designs are ideas for enhancing plazas with multiple urban landmarks, many featuring the river gods and huge jets of water, a traditional fountain form that may have been promoted by Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, or by antique statues of river gods which dotted the landscape.
In modern times, fountain designers have sought to update past styles of fountains with modern architectural sensibilities. Modern French Garden designers are reviving French classical Garden design, but simplifying it to a new modest scale, and using new materials, and defining spaces differently, for instance using concrete walls. Many modern concept drawings propose secluded salons (or outdoor rooms) where people can enjoy tranquility in the midst of a larger public garden. Normally, the central focus is a figurative water fountain, a personification of a water source, with water falling from the earned onto a decorative shoulder, and to symmetrical trellises housing columns formed into fountains for drinking or handwashing.
Many contemporary fountain designers continue the practice of drawing regularly in personal sketchbooks record observations from nature and to jot down ideas for fountain designs. For decades, American designers have sketched movie watery mountain streams, and coastal shores. Even the most modern engineering firms, while designing fountains, normally start their design process with a series whole of a musty foolish it is sketchbook drawings. Often, the drawing show plans for different playful water effects, but some show the designer working out how to use technology to click to read more create the desired water action, such as giant leaping arcs of water. With the use of modern computer technology, a fountain designer can then translate these drawings and sketches into hydraulic realities and the sketches into actual fountains.