A hilly, space-constrained site didn’t prevent Skip Phillips from giving his clients exactly what they wanted — a spa, moving water, a lap lane, and the special flair that has earned the co-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group worldwide acclaim.

The hillside lot sat at the side of an angular, contemporary home, with only about 14 feet separating the patio and a side wall marking the property line. Three-foot setbacks made the space even tighter. “In terms of drawing, it was one of the more difficult projects that we’ve done in recent years,” Phillips said.

Within those physical confines, Phillips, along with Dave Peterson, a Genesis 3 platinum member, styled this contemporary 11-by-36-foot masterpiece, cleverly positioning a spa to accommodate a lap lane and vanishing edge.

Phillips used several techniques to integrate the home and pool. To link the waterscape with a side wall, he designed four stainless steel weirs to cantilever over the coping and flow elegantly into the pool. A sand-washed concrete deck and stepping stones fused with the home’s palette, and colorful glass mosaic tile accents the entire yard.

However, there were challenges along the way.

With space so tight, Watershape Consulting decided to bring a surveyor onto the site, and what started as an extra precaution turned into a crucial step. The surveyors determined that the back wall actually rested more than a foot onto the neighbor’s property.

“We had to shrink the width of the pool by about 13 inches,” Peterson says.

This affected the spa as well, which started out as a square perimeter overflow vessel. If left that way, it would have interfered with the needed lap lane. Instead, the spa was narrowed to 4 1/2 feet and placed lengthwise in the pool, allowing swimmers to glide past it.

As they prepared to start construction, Peterson made another discovery. While digging around the pool, he and his crews realized the footing for the side wall varied in width, and some areas were larger than they thought. As luck would have it, Phillips had caught the narrower spots during his initial site inspection.

Thus, the pool would have to be brought in a few inches, moving it farther from the wall. This affected the four weirs. Now they’d have to cantilever an unusually long 18 inches to drop into the water.

Facing these logistical challenges head-on, the team demonstrated one of Phillips’ deeply held principles — namely, the importance of pairing the right designer and builder.

“One isn’t any good without the other,” Phillips says.