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瀑布或者水帘确实能给我们的身心带来极大的放松和愉悦，但是许多环境的因素会影响水流在空中的飘散路径，而这种路径极其具有不确定性，这就给设计这种效果的设计师和工程师带来了美学和技术上的挑战。

Water doesn’t typically fly through the airwith the greatest of ease. Indeed, multitudes of environmental factorsinfluence it along the way, making its behavior unpredictable and offering realchallenges to designers and engineers who want to create consistent visual and aestheticeffects.

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纵观几个世纪的水形设计，人们对下落一米五左右的范围内，自然重力下落的瀑布有一定的控制能力。在下落过程中瀑布的水膜会破裂，会削弱美学的效果，并导致了一定程度的溅水，引起一些不愉悦的单调重复的噪音。

Through all the centuries of water shapedesign, the laws of physics have imposed restrictions on the water shaper’sability to extend a laminar flow of sheeting water beyond a drop of five or sixfeet. Go much beyond that limit and the sheet breaks up, thus impairing theaesthetic effect, causing an annoying degree of splashing and generating anabundance of undesirable, monotonous noise.

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这些年，这种自然的瀑布垂落效果有了改变，并能广泛运用在公共开放空间，特质的挡水槽和喷嘴能带来四米左右不破水的成片瀑布效果。直到现在，基于预算的控制下，这种解决方法已经被常常用在小型商业项目和居住项目。即便这样也已经有进步了。

Those physical laws have been seriously bentin public spaces in recent times. Indeed, special weirs and nozzles have madeit possible to achieve laminar flows of 12 feet or more. Up until now, thesolutions employed to achieve these effects have usually been beyond the budgetof smaller commercial projects or residential clients – but that’s changing.

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我们长期研究瀑布落水的情况，着眼于研究最大可能地让瀑布薄水片大而不破的效果。一些高端的项目能够提供我们进行研究和开发的机会，做一些延伸性的发展。在商业项目里面，为了达到设计者的创意，我们要去向他们解释这种达到效果的方法和付出的代价，让设计者有一定的概念。

We’ve long been studying the phenomenon offalling water with an eye toward maximizing the surface tension of water andthereby extending the “laminar” effect without breaking the bank. We’ve had theluxury of working on some high-end projects that enabled us to perform the researchand development necessary to do that stretching. By adapting some of the design ideas we used in those commercial applications, we’ve been able to translate the technologyto a scale and price point that makes sense for designers of residential water features.