Custom Conservatory Design – what does it really mean? …continued
Continued…
We regularly get requests for projects that are truly different from the “standard” wood conservatory. For example, an architect recently called who was searching for a company to design and build a steel conservatory for his client.
He did not mean a wood conservatory with steel in it, but a conservatory made entirely from steel so that it had the authentic look of an original “old-world” glass house. It was to cover a swimming pool and be attached to an exquisitely designed French country manor home.
He hired Tanglewood to design a classical steel conservatory structure that had no woodwork either on the inside of the room or on the outside. The roof structure was designed using decoratively detailed steel parts that included actual steel rafters themselves.
Since we had not built a conservatory like this before, almost all of the details had to be conceived and thought out from scratch. We literally invented a completely new building system to accomplish what had been asked of us by the architect.
This is not so unusual for us and we enjoy the kind of challenge. The end result is always something quite spectacular in part because it is such a departure from what has been done before and also because it seems to open such new and exciting opportunities for interesting new projects. The finished conservatory always has such a unique, fresh look.
Another example of this was the Palmhouse project we recently completed and is shown on the second page of the Palmhouses & Greenhouses section of our site. The technique of using small overlapping flat panes of glass to form a curved geometric form was used extensively in the nineteenth century. Look at the images of the elaborate conservatories from that era. It’s hard not to marvel at their outrageous design creativity – not to mention their willingness to actually try to build some of those things!
The way those conservatory domes and other shapes were constructed utilized the same technique which we decided to attempt to revive. A lot of research and development time went into the project before we were comfortable that we could really pull it off.
When we did however, the resulting aesthetic is something that could not have been created by “faking it” – by which I mean trying to get something that looks sort of like the real thing, but misses the mark.
We’ve got some more interesting efforts of this kind in the works which I’ll fill you in on as they progress.
