There are luxury pools. And then there are the kinds of projects where the pool itself becomes architecture.

The kind that cantilevers off the side of a high-rise. The kind where swimmers float above a dining room through a massive transparent floor panel. The kind where acrylic walls, windows, vessels, and water features aren’t simply decorative accents — they become the centerpiece of the entire design.

That’s the world Jason Jovaag operates in every day.

As President and CEO of HammerHead Aquatics, Jovaag has quietly become one of the most sought-after specialists in the global luxury aquatic design space. When elite builders, architects, and designers need complex acrylic engineering for some of the world’s most ambitious pool projects, his name comes up repeatedly.

Ask enough people in the upper echelon of the pool industry who they trust with acrylic windows and structural aquatic features, and eventually the same answer keeps surfacing:

“Jason’s the guy.”

That reputation didn’t happen overnight. Over the years, HammerHead Aquatics has built a portfolio spanning luxury residential pools, high-rise rooftop installations, zoos, aquariums, wellness facilities, and some of the most recognizable aquatic environments in the world. What separates the company from many others operating in the acrylic space is its vertically integrated approach.

“We actually do design, engineering, fabrication, and installation,” explained Jovaag. “So it’s a one-stop shop where we can actually follow the process all the way from concept through construction.”

That turnkey approach has positioned HammerHead as a critical partner on projects where there is very little margin for error. These aren’t standard backyard pools. These are engineering exercises wrapped inside luxury architecture.

Pushing the Envelope on High-Rise Pool Design

One of the biggest trends driving HammerHead’s growth has been the explosion of vertically integrated luxury living — particularly in markets like Miami, the Bahamas, Dubai, and Beverly Hills.

Developers and ultra-high-net-worth homeowners increasingly want private aquatic experiences incorporated directly into elevated living spaces. That means plunge pools hanging off balconies. Cantilevered rooftop pools. Acrylic edge details suspended dozens of stories above the ground.

Jovaag was one of the early specialists helping bring those ideas into reality. Today, those projects are becoming increasingly extreme.

“We like to push the envelope as far as what we can design and build,” Jovaag explained. “And we’re surely still doing that to market today.”

That mentality has made HammerHead a frequent collaborator with some of the most recognizable names in luxury pool and architectural design.

Jovaag has worked alongside elite builders and designers including Ryan Hughes, Paolo Benedetti, Danny Wang, and acclaimed modern architect Paul McClean of McClean Architecture, amongst many others.

The McClean collaborations, in particular, have produced several standout residential projects in Beverly Hills and abroad.

One recently completed project incorporated a massive two-story acrylic water wall that cascades down beside floating stairs into a lower sanctuary area featuring landscaping and a reflecting pond.

“You start out at grade level as you walk up to the home over some floating stairs, and then the water cascades down two stories,” Jovaag said.

The projects are dramatic, architectural, and increasingly cinematic in nature — exactly the type of luxury installations dominating the covers of design magazines and social media feeds.

Acrylic Is Becoming More Than Just a Window

While acrylic viewing panels remain a cornerstone of HammerHead’s business, Jovaag says the material is now being integrated into luxury pools in far more creative ways than many people realize.

“We’re doing some of these swim-up bars,” he explained. “What we’re actually doing now is chemically bonding a bar top on the very top of the window.”

The result creates an interactive social experience where guests inside the pool can engage directly with people seated outside the water.

HammerHead is also seeing increased demand for acrylic fire features, acrylic spheres incorporated into landscape design, and large-format acrylic water walls that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional glass.

“Glass does have its limitations when it comes to manufacturing size,” said Jovaag. “But the possibilities with acrylic are endless with the chemical bonding technology to be able to get to some of these larger format sheets.”

Another trend gaining traction in the ultra-luxury market is acrylic floor panels.

These installations allow homeowners to look upward through the bottom of a pool into living spaces below — transforming the swimming pool itself into a functional skylight.

HammerHead currently has one especially ambitious project underway involving what Jovaag described as one of the largest residential floor windows attempted to date.

“That window is massive,” he said. “It’ll be one of the largest floor windows done for a residential application at about 32,000 pounds.”

The floor window will reportedly span over an entire dining area beneath the pool.

The Deep Dive Dubai Project

Among Jovaag’s many career milestones, one project stands above the rest. Deep Dive Dubai.

Widely recognized as the deepest swimming pool in the world, the facility reaches roughly 60 meters deep and has become an internationally recognized attraction for divers and aquatic enthusiasts.

For Jovaag, the project represented one of the most technically demanding installations of his career.

“Working over in Dubai, working in the conditions that we were at, and then also just hovering scaffolding platform over a 150- or 180-foot deep hole in the ground is a little nerve-wracking by itself,” he recalled.

HammerHead worked alongside acrylic manufacturer Reynolds Polymer on the installation, handling the placement of massive acrylic viewing panels throughout the facility.

The project helped cement HammerHead’s reputation internationally and showcased the company’s ability to execute at the highest level under incredibly difficult conditions.

Educating the Industry

Despite the prestige attached to many of HammerHead’s projects, Jovaag remains heavily involved in industry education.

Because acrylic installations remain relatively specialized within the pool industry, many builders encounter a steep learning curve during their first project.

That’s where HammerHead often steps in long before installation begins.

“We want to give them the tools to make them successful,” Jovaag explained. “Giving them dos and don’ts of what not to do, what to expect from us, what we expect from them.”

That consulting mindset has made HammerHead a valuable collaborator for designers and contractors attempting increasingly sophisticated builds.

Jovaag has also become a familiar face through educational seminars and industry presentations with Watershape University, where he regularly shares knowledge on acrylic engineering, installation practices, and design limitations.

His approachable teaching style has earned him a loyal following among pool professionals eager to better understand the possibilities of acrylic integration.

Expanding Into Wellness and Hydrotherapy

Another major growth segment for HammerHead Aquatics has been wellness and hydrotherapy design. As luxury wellness spaces continue becoming more prominent in both residential and commercial development, acrylic is finding new applications beyond pure aesthetics.

“We’re seeing a big wave right now in the wellness centers,” Jovaag said.

One emerging concept involves combining hot therapy spas and cold plunges into a single body of water separated by acrylic partitions.

HammerHead is also exploring hydrotherapy applications tied to mobility rehabilitation and medical therapy, where transparent acrylic allows practitioners to study joint movement underwater in real time.

That crossover between luxury design and functional aquatic therapy reflects how broad the company’s reach has become.

While many know HammerHead primarily for high-end pools, Jovaag points out that zoo and aquarium work remains a major pillar of the business as well.

“We’re very busy with all facets of what we have going on,” he said. “The zoo and aquarium industry for us will always be one of the larger parts of our business model.”

Building the Future In-House

HammerHead Aquatics is now entering another major chapter. The company recently opened a new Las Vegas facility that will allow it to bring approximately 90 percent of manufacturing and fabrication operations in-house.

For Jovaag, the move is about greater control, better scheduling, and ensuring consistency from start to finish.

“The term I use — care, custody, and control,” he said. “We own every process from A to Z.”

That expanded capability positions HammerHead to continue growing alongside a luxury pool segment that seems increasingly willing to chase bigger ideas and more ambitious aquatic experiences.

And if current trends are any indication, those ideas are only getting bolder. Because in today’s luxury market, a pool is no longer just a vessel of water. For firms like HammerHead Aquatics, it has become structural art.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our recent conversation with Jason Jovaag on the Pool Magazine Podcast.

Pool construction standards don’t fail all at once.

They fail the first time someone decides that the pressure of the moment is greater than the conviction behind the work. That decision is rarely dramatic. It doesn’t look like a failure. It looks like a reasonable response to a difficult situation.

In 35 years of building pools, I watched it happen more times than I can count. And it almost always started the same way.

There are two moments that begin the drift.

The first is the financial squeeze. The job is tight. The margin is thin. Something costs more than it should. And someone, maybe you, maybe someone you trusted, decides to substitute a material, compress a timeline, or skip a step that felt optional in the moment.

The Hidden Risks of Cutting Corners in Pool Construction

In the pool industry, I saw this most often in the reinforcement steel. The wrong size. The wrong spacing. Decisions made before the concrete was ever poured were invisible once the job was done. Sometimes the only way to know was to get in and look, and even then, you had to know what you were looking for.

The nature of this industry is that the most critical decisions happen before anyone can see them. The steel, the plumbing, the drainage design, the engineering behind the shell. All of it is buried, covered, or filled before the homeowner ever sets foot in the backyard.

That invisibility is exactly where the temptation lives. If no one can see it, no one will know. If it holds through the warranty period, the problem becomes someone else’s. The compromise gets made in the dark, and the person who made it is usually long gone by the time the failure shows up.

Sometimes, there was a small crack, a slight movement in the structure that only someone who knew what to look for would notice. The homeowner had no idea. The pool looked fine.

Until it didn’t.

I’ve stood in front of homeowners and explained what was failing and why. The reaction was almost always the same: shock, anger, disappointment. And then the line that never got easier to hear: “We wanted to use you guys, but you were too expensive.”

The repair was exponentially more expensive than building it right would have been. Every time.

It gets justified quickly. We’ll make it up on the next job. The customer will never know. It’s close enough.

And maybe it holds. That time.

My dad had a saying about that. Close enough is only good for horseshoes and hand grenades.

But the decision has already been made. Not just about that job. About what kind of company you are willing to be when it costs something to hold the line. The people who work for you saw it too. They filed it away. They now know where the line actually is.

Standards Are Proven Under Pressure

The second moment is customer capitulation. A client pushes back on price. A competitor comes in lower. And rather than holding the number that reflects the work, reflects the standard, you match it. You tell yourself it’s a relationship investment. A loss leader. A one-time exception.

I know that moment well.

I had a competitor, also a friend, who took a job I walked away from. After it was done, he asked me how I knew that client would be a problem. The honest answer was that I didn’t know the client would be a problem. I knew the job couldn’t be built to the standard at that price. There was no way to do it right without compromise. The client didn’t realize the compromise would result in a poor project. My competitor couldn’t collect full payment.

Nobody won. Except the standard.

It rarely stays a one-time exception. The second compromise is always easier than the first. The decision has already been made once. The precedent is set. What used to be the line is now just a starting point for negotiation.

Both moments feel like flexibility. Both moments feel like good business. But they are not flexible. They are the first compromise. And the first is never the last.

A standard is not a rule on a wall. It is not a mission statement or a values document.

A standard is only worth holding if you can explain why it exists. Not every process is a standard. Not every requirement is a conviction. The ones worth holding are the ones traceable directly to the quality of the work, the safety of the structure, and the integrity of what you promised.

A standard is a decision made under pressure.

Anyone can hold a standard when it’s easy. When the margin is healthy, when the customer is happy, when the job is going well, holding the standard costs nothing. It proves nothing.

This is where most leaders underestimate the problem.

The standard is only proven when keeping it costs something. When the squeeze is real. When the customer is unhappy. When the competitor is cheaper. That is the moment the standard either holds or it doesn’t.

Your Team Is Always Watching

And the people around you are watching. Every time. They are not judging. They are calibrating. They are figuring out where the real line is, not the one you talk about, but the one you actually defend. And they will build their own behavior around what they find.

I have seen it go both ways. A crew member at a job I wasn’t on makes the call the right way. Holds the line, pushes back on a shortcut, does it the way it should be done, even when no one is watching. You find out later. You didn’t tell them to do it. They did it because they knew why it mattered.

And I have seen the other version. A trench was not properly compacted because it was the end of the day, and everyone was ready to go home. Not dramatic. Not malicious. Just the path of least resistance when the pressure showed up, and the standard wasn’t in the room. Years later, the deck moves. The homeowner calls. You find out that way.

Both versions tell you exactly where your standard actually lives. The standard lives not in your policy manual, not in what you say at the morning meeting, but in what your people do when you are not there.

You cannot hold a standard alone. You can set it. You can model it. But you cannot be in every room, on every job, in every conversation where the pressure shows up and the easy path is right there.

My team had a saying. “That’s not how Lee does it.”

And my business partner hated it.

Not because my way was the only way. There are many ways to do a job correctly. But because I had set a standard, they had internalized it. They weren’t quoting a rule. They were carrying a conviction.

That is what it looks like when a standard has taken hold. It doesn’t need you in the room anymore.

The Builders Who Last

The reality of holding a standard is this:

You will lose jobs because of it. You will lose customers because of it.

This industry gives you plenty of opportunities to compromise. The margins are tight, the competition is real, and the homeowner standing in front of you has three other bids. The invisible nature of the work means you could cut corners, and nobody would know. The pressure to match a lower price, to substitute a material, to compress a timeline. It shows up on every job. It never stops showing up.

But the builders who last, the ones who build reputations that outlive any single project, are the ones who decided early what kind of company they were going to be when it cost something to hold the line. That decision doesn’t get made once. It gets made every time the pressure shows up. And every time it is made correctly, it gets easier for the people around you to make it the same way.

The jobs and customers you lose by holding the line are not the ones you were built to serve. And the ones who stay know what they are getting. That is the foundation worth building on.

In a market defined by architectural pedigree and uncompromising aesthetics, reputation is everything. And in the Palm Springs and Palm Desert corridor — where mid-century icons meet modern glass-and-steel estates — Melo’s Pools & Outdoors has quietly carved out a lane that few builders are willing to occupy.

“We’ve kind of built a name for taking on projects that maybe most of our competitors do not want to get involved with just due to how complex they are,” says co-owner Albert Melo. “A lot of the times we get involved early on in the early phases of the project. We’re willing to take our time and answer maybe a hundred questions before we’re even able to provide a price.”

That willingness to engage early — and absorb the risk that comes with it — has become the firm’s calling card.

From Engineering to Entrepreneurship

Melo’s path back to the family business wasn’t linear. He studied civil engineering in Orange County and was on track for a conventional engineering career before a pivotal mentor redirected him.

“I don’t think you’re an engineer,” a builder he interned for once told him. “You’re going to be a great businessman one day.”

At the time, it felt destabilizing. But looking back, Melo sees the value.

“I don’t think it was a waste of time. It’s actually helped me tremendously to be able to work on these projects and use that knowledge with architects and structural engineers and city inspectors.”

When he returned to the Coachella Valley to help his father with what was then a small pool service and remodeling operation, he never left. Twelve years later, that modest operation has evolved into an award-winning luxury pool firm capable of executing six- and seven-figure watershapes.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight.

“I became obsessed with the business side of things,” Melo explains. “How to be more efficient. How to create a better experience for the client. How to create a better sales process, a better construction process. Even if that meant every day just improving one percent.”

Over time, that obsession began attracting a different clientele.

“You kind of put your head up one day and you go, wow — you’re naturally just starting to attract that clientele that really wants quality.”

A Design-Savvy Market Demands Discipline

Palm Springs is not a forgiving design environment. It’s a place where architecture is cultural identity. Mid-century modern homes sit beside ultra-contemporary estates. Landscape, linework, and proportion matter.

“It’s heavily controlled by the looks of things and the design of the home,” Melo says. “Half of the pools we build, they don’t get used. It’s more for looks. It’s more to enjoy the outdoors with your cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of wine at night.”

That means the pool is rarely the star of the show. It’s part of a larger composition.

“Palm Springs is all about mid-century architecture,” he says. “It’s what governs the whole design of a pool.”

In some neighborhoods, that means restraint — preserving original palms and retrofitting older shells without disturbing architectural integrity. In others, particularly in Palm Desert and La Quinta, it means infinity edges, zero-edge pools, and expansive entry water features tied into modern estate construction.

The throughline is respect for place.

Owning the “Hard Projects” Lane

At some point, Melo’s firm stopped chasing typical work and started leaning into the uncomfortable.

“It naturally just happened,” he says. “We set expectations early. We tell them the truth. No, this is not going to take two months. Just the permitting process is going to take two months. The construction process can take another six.”

That level of transparency costs them jobs.

“There are clients that don’t want to hear that. They walk away. They go with the other company that maybe told them what they wanted to hear.”

But the clients who stay are different.

“In order to build a Ferrari, it takes time. It’s not how fast can you do it — it’s let’s do this right.”

For Melo, the client relationship has to be aligned before they commit to a complex project.

“That client has to see the value in what our company offers. If they see the value that we’re able to help them early on, that we know what we’re doing, and that we’re going to bring the right vendors and engineers into the project, then they’re willing to pay for it and they’re willing to wait for the realistic timeline.”

That alignment is what makes the difference between a successful high-end build and a slow-moving disaster.

The Acrylic Wall Project: Engineering Under Pressure

The project that crystallizes Melo’s reputation sits in the heart of Palm Desert — a modern estate anchored by an acrylic wall pool and a floating acrylic bar that appears to hover over illuminated water.

It began, as many of Melo’s projects do, with a simple directive from the homeowner.

“They were like, Albert, we want something different. We want something unique.”

One idea led to another. A transparent wall. Then a bar. Then a question no one had yet answered.

“What if we make the table out of acrylic?”

At the time, Melo didn’t know of anyone who had executed a fully integrated floating acrylic bar in that fashion. But the idea stuck.

“There’s so much planning involved,” he says. “There’s so many what ifs. There’s so many unknowns.”

The coordination required was immense. Acrylic vendor. Structural engineers. In-house CAD design. Hydraulics. Load calculations. Deflection analysis. The final email count approached two thousand messages between all parties involved.

“You’re almost working backwards,” Melo explains. “You need to provide a budget, but you also need to understand how that’s going to be constructed.”

Details mattered at a microscopic level — pool depth, waterline alignment, structural support, acrylic thickness, anchoring systems, tolerances.

And then came the fill.

“That was my first acrylic pool that we had ever done,” Melo recalls. “I just could not relax. I’m like, what if it leaks? What if it fails? All that pressure of the water — is it going to deflect that acrylic?”

He drove to the site late at night while the pool was filling.

“I remember it was halfway through the acrylic and there were no leaks. It was almost there.”

That night still stands out.

“Anyone that’s been in this industry remembers their first infinity edge pool, their first zero-edge pool,” he says. “With time and experience comes confidence.”

Today, the illuminated acrylic wall glows beneath the desert sky. The floating bar, supported by transparent columns, creates the illusion of weightlessness. It is architectural sculpture as much as it is watershape — and a defining example of what happens when a builder refuses to default to ordinary.

Designing With Restraint

Not every signature project is about pushing materials. Some are about knowing when not to.

On another featured property, Melo’s team preserved decades-old palm trees rather than remove them to simplify construction.

“We said, we have to keep these palms,” he explains. “It’s a signature look of Palm Springs.”

Structurally, that decision complicated the dig and required careful engineering to ensure root systems remained stable. But the payoff was visual continuity — a modernized pool anchored by historic palms that tied the property to its mid-century heritage.

“Sometimes restraint is the most important part,” Melo says. “The challenge is, when you’re working with big architects and successful clients, they don’t want to hear the word no. They have an idea and it’s our job to figure out how it gets done.”

That often means mediating between architectural intent and structural reality.

Landscape architects might draw a water feature flush against a home’s exterior wall, but structural footings may project 12 to 18 inches outward.

“We have to bring those concerns early on,” he says. “Sometimes the structural engineer has to redo their calculations so we can design our wall flush with the house.”

The discipline isn’t about limiting ambition. It’s about integrating it.

Process in a Custom World

In production building, process is standardized. In custom luxury construction, process must be flexible without becoming chaotic.

“It starts with, are we the right fit?” Melo says. “Usually that starts with a phone call or a Zoom meeting.”

From there, they request conceptual drawings — sometimes nothing more than bubble sketches — and begin mapping out what information is needed from civil engineers, structural engineers, and architects.

Because many of their builds stretch across months or even years, continuity is critical.

“I probably have five or ten projects right now where it’s been a year, some of them two years, and we’re just waiting to come back,” Melo says.

Pools may be shot to structural shell and then paused until vertical construction on the home reaches a certain stage.

To maintain momentum, Melo and his project managers maintain contact — site visits, emails, coordination meetings — even during dormant phases.

“We try to keep that communication alive.”

Looking Ahead

Despite industry recognition — including 40 Under 40 honors — Melo remains wary of complacency.

“The day you think you have it all figured out is when you don’t,” he says.

He credits mentorship from friends and associates who run nine-figure businesses for sharpening his understanding of financial systems and operational discipline.

“Yes, we’re building pools, but we’re also running a business,” he says. “We have to make sure we take care of that side.”

What excites him most isn’t reckless expansion. It’s controlled growth.

“Growth can be a double-edged sword,” Melo says. “We want to maintain our quality and find our sweet spot. We’re busy, but not so busy that it affects our quality.”

And perhaps most importantly:

“I’m excited to be able to say no to the ones that maybe don’t fit our values.”

In a market where aesthetics reign and reputations travel fast, that discipline may be the true differentiator.

For anyone who doubts it, just stand beside one of Melo’s exquisitely designed aquatic showpieces and bask in the splendor and technical prowess of true craftsmanship on display.

Some builders avoid the hard jobs.

Melo’s Pools & Outdoors built a name on taking them on.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our entire conversation with Albert Melo of Melo’s Pools & Outdoors on the Pool Magazine Podcast.

Builder Credits: Melo’s Pools & Outdoors
Photo Credits: Jimi Smith Photography