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Here is a picture of two designs for a desk pedestal made from cardboard boxes that I mentioned in my blog two weeks ago. I produced them when I was a design student back around 1978.
I was reminded of these when I saw the unusual design for the B-uro one-piece office from the design firm Colect in Belgium which I also posted a picture of two weeks ago.
New Website Design:
You may have noticed the new look of our website recently. In response to feedback from viewers, we expanded the width of the pages to make them more legible and better displayed on the wider computer monitors that are much more prevalent these days.
I’m reminded of our very first website which was put up way back in 1997. A friend of ours put it together over a weekend- it was only about 3 pages! At that time there was a 26 character limit to all the URL’s so we couldn’t even use our full name, Tanglewood Conservatories.
Since then we’ve had four major complete redesigns, and several major updates along the way.
If anyone has any feedback/ comments on the new design- or maybe something else we should consider adding or changing on the site, please let me know. We would like to make the site as relevant and easy to use as possible and would appreciate everyone’s comments.
Another trip to Germany:
Nancy and I have been invited to address members of the German association of Wintergarden manufacturers (Wintergarten-Fachverband) in Hamburg next month. Wintergardens are as we call them, conservatories, greenhouses, orangeries etc.
The chairman of the association noted in an email to us that he found our website by pure chance on a Sunday morning and was very impressed.
After some consideration, we decided to accept his offer as we would like the opportunity to meet with some of our industry counterparts in Germany.
There are many subjects that I feel we can share with others – not only about our custom conservatory design and building but about some unique aspects of our company – which soon I will also begin to talk about here.
When I was in Germany last year looking at machinery suppliers and woodworking facilities, I was impressed by many aspects of the German approach to manufacturing and business and I’m happy to have the opportunity to return.
I will post entries throughout my visit there, as I did before, to chronicle our trip’s highlights.
Renewed interest in Greenhouses:
Along with the new sense of the importance of everything being Green, comes a renewed interest in greenhouses.
We’ve seen a surge of interest in our greenhouses including clients who are actually interested in growing their own food! This would obviously not be subsistence growing, but the idea of producing one’s own food rather than purchasing it from afar off has a definite attraction.
I’ve been much more attuned to where things come from when I shop these days and I’m a bit dismayed when I see that for example, often the apples come all the way from New Zealand. They usually taste like it as well.
The zucchini that I get at our local supermarket, and I try to buy organic as much as possible, comes from someplace in the US but the package does not say where.
Last summer some of the folks at Tanglewood who have gardens, brought in zucchinis which compared to the supermarket ones were from another planet. The fresh local ones were so delicious I could have almost eaten them with nothing else and had a great meal.
I can hardly ever bring myself to buy the store bought ones anymore and I’m thinking of building a custom greenhouse so I can enjoy great produce all year round – though this might be just an excuse to design and build another one of our great conservatories.
All the best, Alan
The May issue of Garden Design magazine beat me to the punch with the publication of a new Tanglewood project. On page 34, in their section “Style”, there is a photo of a conservatory project we completed which was designed as an office for a publisher and his wife.
An office space is not a usual use for a custom conservatory and this one is quite special. Garden Design magazine calls it a “Dream Office”. There a custom built desk-for-two and a seating arrangement of Mies chairs on a Tibetan carpet all under the ethereal delicacy of an original Calder mobile!
Garden Design notes: “If prefabricated-building kits lie on one end of the spectrum, Tanglewood Conservatories, a Maryland based atelier specializing in the design and construction of custom conservatories and greenhouses, is at the other.”
They go on to say: “Whether a conservatory or a nineteenth-century copper dome you’re after, Tanglewood’s work is the stuff dream offices are made of.”
I had intended to add several new pages to the portfolio section of our website soon- one of which to showcase this particular project. In the meantime, you can see the preview in print.
While thumbing through the magazine, I noticed in the same “Style” section another interesting “office”. It’s an original piece of furniture from the Belgian design firm Colect (011-32-51-40-83-37) called B-uro. The concept behind the piece “was to create a piece of office furniture that doesn’t feel like office furniture.”
With its modern structural simplicity, it reminds me of some of my experimental furniture designs from architecture school. I was very interested in creating beautiful furniture by modifying cardboard boxes into sculptural as well as functional forms. I actually built myself a desk which served me well for quite a few years. I loved the simplicity and the “Small is Beautiful” nature if it- in addition to the fact that it was cheap and I was a student on limited means!
“The B-ero design has an abstract, decorative quality. That one would slip into it to polish off some office paperwork- seems entirely secondary!”
I agree.
Alan
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