Tanglewood Conservatories Blog – Alan Stein's Writings about Custom Conservatory Design and More

This is a picture of Tanglewood shop personnel starting to load steel roof trusses onto a flatbed truck for shipment to a jobsite in Mississippi.

The project is a very interesting swimming pool enclosure; it is entirely made of steel, glass and aluminum on both the exterior and the interior. The steel part going onto the truck will be exposed on the inside of the room. The architect wanted a completely authentic steel and glass conservatory for his client and did not want any woodwork in it at all.

We have recently designed and built several of these steel and glass conservatories as well as a number of other pool enclosures. The challenge is to find ways of detailing the structure so that it doesn’t look like the contemporary aluminum frame pool buildings seen everywhere that are—well, just plain really ugly.

Just as with a wood building, it is the sensitivity to proportion, scale and the details which make the difference between the mundane, thoughtless buildings everywhere around us and the unique, creative and well crafted forms of the talented and thoughtful designer.

The challenge with working with steel is that it is much more difficult to add the details. Working with wood, it is easy to use a shaper or other cutter to make the forms you want however working with steel requires much more creativity and foresight.

Steel also offers a different aesthetic. A steel and glass conservatory can be much lighter feeling. The window sash and door parts are usually much narrower which if properly used, can give the room an elegant, gossamer effect.

We’re anxiously waiting to see how this one comes out when finished. I’ll keep everyone posted with more pictures as it progresses.

Alan