1980s WET was founded as WET Enterprises, Inc., which at the time stood for
Water
Entertainment
Technologies, by Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson in 1983. as well as landscape architects
Dan Kiley and Peter Ker Walker to create the waterscape of
Fountain Place (at Allied Bank Tower) in
Dallas,
Texas. WET's first municipal project came in 1987 when it was commissioned to create a work for the Los Angeles Music Center. The work was designed around
Peace On Earth, a controversial sculpture designed by
Jacques Lipchitz. In 1988, WET introduced the first of its patented shooters, the MiniShooter, which utilizes compressed air to propel water in the air, for the Seto Ohashi Exhibition in Sakaide City, Japan. One of the company's most notable designs came in 1998 when it collaborated with
Steve Wynn to design the
Fountains of Bellagio, for the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Fountains are set in an 8-acre (3.2 ha) manmade lake. Under Bellagio, WET collaborated with an array of composers and choreographers to create the Fountain's shows, including renowned composer Gerard Schurmann and the American choreographer, producer and director
Kenny Ortega. Contrary to urban myth, the lake is not filled with treated
greywater from the hotel. The lake is serviced by a freshwater well that was drilled decades prior to irrigate a golf course that previously existed on the site. The Fountains actually use less water than irrigating the golf course did. In the event of an emergency, the Fountain's reservoir can be pumped into firefighting equipment to assist any neighboring casino without drawing from the city system. The Fountains of Bellagio introduced WET's motion controlled robotic water nozzles, built for WET by the robotics company Sarcos, for the first time in the industry. The design included a 120-foot tower of reflective glass panels and incorporated water and fire. Upon the completion of the games, the Cauldron was installed at Rice Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah, in the
Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Cauldron Park. In 2005, WET was contracted to design a water themed set for the
2005 MTV Video Music Awards, marking one of the company's first commissioned temporary features. The final design included 7,000 gallons of water that flowed under the stage, 2,000 feet of piping, and 8,000 feet of electrical wire. WET developed its third water feature in New York in 2004 as part of a renovation of the
Brooklyn Museum. (The first was the
Museum of Modern Art's garden fountain in 1987 and the second was
Rockefeller Center's Prometheus Fountain in 1988.) In 2005, WET completed two more projects in New York: the fountains at
Columbus Circle and the
United States Tennis Association feature. For Columbus Circle, the company worked in collaboration with the Olin Partnership. The company was engaged to redesign the fountain at the recommendation of the firm
Diller Scofidio + Renfro who were the lead designers on the overall renovation of the
Lincoln Center. It continued with casino designs in 2008 when the company was commissioned to transform the volcano feature at the Mirage Hotel and Casino. WET was credited in 2009 with creating the world's largest performing fountain, with its creation of
The Dubai Fountain. The Fountain contains 6,600 underwater lights which can be seen from space more than 200 miles away. It was also in 2009 that the company was commissioned to create five fountains for the
Las Vegas City Center. One fountain was the world's first choreographed ice feature with another being the world's widest programmable water wall.
2010s WET completed additional Dubai projects beginning in 2010. These include five fountains at
Burj Khalifa Tower Park in Dubai. That same year in Beijing, WET's feature at the Global Trade Center premiered the company's WaterBells; manipulating laminar flow fountains to create dome-shaped sheets of water. In 2012, WET enhanced the original 2006 design for the Wynn Macau, doubling the density of the design and debuting the world's brightest (280) watt) underwater LED lights that were engineered and manufactured by WET. The company was also commissioned to create the fountain show for the
Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea for the expo's signature Big-O Water Feature. The same year, WET created one of the largest water shows in the world with the completion of
Aquanura in the Efteling theme park, in the Netherlands. WET created
Luminous, a water wall spanning over 3 stories tall for the
W Hotels Guangzhou’s entrance, debuting with the hotel’s opening in April 2013. The WET-designed wall of water and light is composed of a thinly-woven metal screen over which water runs upon at different programmed rates to vary in appearance. In addition to choreographing the wall's surging water, WET used 5,000 color changing LEDs to allow the 19-meter mosaic of light, lines, and color to morph throughout the day. For the
2014 Winter Olympic Games in
Sochi,
Russia, WET created
The Waters of the Olympic Park, a colorful choreographed fountain located in the
Sochi Medals Plaza. The feature was prominently featured during the Olympic Games’ opening and closing ceremonies. This second Olympic feature for WET (first being the
2002 Winter Olympics Cauldron in
Salt Lake City), houses a basin containing about 700,000 gallons of water, designed to reveal the five Olympic rings within performances. The feature is choreographed water displays set to a soundtrack of famous Russian composers including
Tchaikovsky and
Khachaturian. In late 2013, WET debuted
Lycaste, an interactive children's fountain named and designed after the
lycaste orchid for Dasada, a resort in
Prachinburi,
Thailand. Set upon a deck of teak wood, the feature is experienced via WET's LED lighting at day in bright white and night in vibrantly programmed color combinations. The feature was removed from Dasada in 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and management restructuring. The former owner of the resort and flower gallery commissioned WET to rebuild the feature, and was relocated to Boonta Flowers and Cafe at Natai Beach in
Phang Nga, about 20 minutes from
Phuket. ==Design features==