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

This is a conceptual design drawing of Tanglewood’s old world pool house conservatory now under construction in the Midwest about which I talked in my earlier blog posting.

In addition to the remarkable ornate steel and cast iron structure which supports the building, the exterior “skin” incorporates a host of custom designed stained glass panels that are reminiscent of Victorian era designs.

Just to give a sense of scale, from the floor to the top of the glass cupola ridge is almost forty feet high.

The first phase of the project installation is now complete and our crew will be returning to start phase two next week.

By the end of the first trip, the entire steel structure was in place, as was the framework for the lower roof and parts of the cupola roof lantern. The main walls for the custom pool enclosure were also up with some of the exterior trim complete.

Phase two will start with the completion of the roof lantern, trim work and the start of the roof glazing, then continue with work on the lower roof. Installation of the beautiful stained glass windows and doors will wait for the final trip.

Those are limestone stone columns supporting the three large pediments over the doors.

The cupola roof lantern, which is fifty feet long and twenty feet wide, was originally going to be hoisted into place in one piece using huge steel support beams and two large cranes however we decided not to risk the feat and it is now being built in pieces.

This is a huge new home that is scheduled to take another three years to finish so it will be a while before the swimming pool will be filled and the pool house enclosure complete.

Alan

Structural steel part being hoisted into place on for old world conservatory replica.

In addition to discussing the changes that have been taking place at Tanglewood over the past year which I began to do in my last blog, I also want to chronicle a really amazing project we’ve been working on for about the same amount of time.

It is one of the most challenging and unique project we’ve ever undertaken and it is now in the early stages of it’s on site installation.

The design challenge was to come up with a way of making the steel structure look authentically old – as if it were “found” somewhere in Europe and brought over and refurbished. Once we figured out how to design the building, we then had to figure out how to build it!

The room is to decorate a very substantial new home in the Midwest and enclose a large swimming pool, spa and lounge area. The unique feature of this conservatory pool enclosure is that from the beginning, the design was to mimic a true nineteenth century steel and glass greenhouse conservatory.

The building is supported by a decorative steel and cast iron structure which is then clad with glass. The owners fell in love with the great glass conservatory at Syon Park in London. They were enamored of the way the delicately detailed cast iron structure sits in distinct contrast to the heavier stone structure that encloses it and they wanted Tanglewood’s design to follow this concept.

What emerged is a truly remarkable building, as I think you’ll see.

Here is truck #4 of 6 (large flatbeds), steel and glass conservatory ready for shipment. Pictured is most of the team that has been working on the project.

Pictured below is the steel structure taking shape piece by piece. It was an elaborate jigsaw puzzle that was fabricated over a thousand miles away from the jobsite by several different fabricators working in tandem under Tanglewood’s direction.

The picture on the left is a picture of Nancy and myself with the project architect, the project manager and the owner of the construction company that is building the massive new house.

Those big round openings in the steel trusses are to accommodate a huge HVAC duct that will condition the entire space.

At the time of this writing, the steel structure is complete and we are just beginning the next phase of the erection, the wall and roof framing which will be the subject of my next report.

Alan

Home from Germany and we’re ready to celebrate the Fourth of July, our country’s Independence Day.

Nancy and I spent the holiday this year at the home of our friends Molly and Michael as we have for the last few years. I mentioned them once before because they have the distinction of owning more of Tanglewood projects than anyone else.

They didn’t start out with this intention nor were they our friends when they purchased their first conservatory, but over the years, as we’ve worked together with them, our friendship has grown.

The Door Before & After

Now they have asked us to start work on a new project (this will be number five) – a domed conservatory off their master bedroom that will replace an aging sunroom in the same location. Phase two of this project will be an ornate copper-roofed bay window for their kitchen.

Molly is a skilled designer who loves our work and knows how to tweak our designs in ways that make them uniquely hers.

For example, the last project we did for them was the replacement of six windows, a door and some mahogany paneling in a small unused space off their kitchen.

Molly and Mike asked us to make some beautiful stained glass windows so that she could turn the small space from nothing more than a walk through to the backyard into a mini parlor. I admit that I thought they were going a bit far when they first told me about their scheme however, as you can see from the pictures, in this case, their foresight was definitely better than mine.

This is what the old windows looked like. That’s Jim with his back to us sizing up the situation before he gets started.

New mahogany and stained glass windows for Molly and Mike’s house.

It is a two story space so the new windows really stand out.

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

We recently completed an interesting project outside of Toronto, Canada. The owners had purchased a log cabin on a beautiful wooded property and added a very contemporary addition which features a “silo” with a glass domed observation deck at the top.

On the interior of the silo is a spiral staircase that ascends to a small round room at the top covered by the glass dome. The room is a 13’ diameter retreat, just big enough for the owners to escape from earth and watch stars light up the night sky, clouds sail past and the sun set over the trees on the distant horizon.

For years people have inquired if we had ever built such a room (a domed silo conservatory) but we never had, so I was delighted when Jon Goulding, the in-house designer at the time for Matthew Sapera Fine Homes in Toronto, first called and inquired.

Jon was great to work with. We had to make sure the room functioned as an actual usable space- for example, there needed to be enough head room at the top of the stairs to meet code, and Jon wanted it to have just the right look. The dome is one half of a sphere and there are twelve windows around its base. We settled on twelve facets because on the one hand, we didn’t want it to have too many facets- then it would seem too crowded and the windows would be too narrow for the view, but on the other hand, if there were not enough facets, the dome would not seem “round”.

Working with Jon, we came up with a good compromise, a terrific, unique project and another very satisfied customer.

Jon Goulding’s background includes over 20 years of education and experience in fine art, architecture, construction and film & television art direction. Jon operates Goulding Design Inc., a Toronto-based studio focused on custom residential design of traditionally inspired and finely detailed city and country homes. Projects include both buildings and interiors for alterations, renovation/additions and new-built homes, as well as specialty buildings including coach houses, stables, pool, garden and guest houses. Scope of work includes full project support from conceptual design, through all municipal approvals, to construction drawings and consultant coordination with an emphasis on detail, materials and craftsmanship.

Goulding Design Inc. / 245 Bessborough Drive, Toronto, Ontario M4G 3K4 / Jon Goulding, Principal / Tel: 416 571-1735 / email: jon@gouldingdesign.com / website: www.gouldingdesign.com

Here is a picture of a very odd window which some of our shop guys just finished building. Notice that none of the corners are 90 degree right angles! It is not an optical illusion. This would not be all that odd- except that the window opens. It is very difficult to make an operable window that does not have a regular geometry.

The top edge of this window follows the roofline of a dormer, the lower edge follows the roofline of the main house below and the short side and the side opposite it are parallel to each other.

The window is part of a shipment of windows that went along with one of our conservatory projects, but was for a different part of the house.

The client chose Tanglewood for the project in part because of our ability and willingness to tackle difficult, unusual requests such as the above window. This window took several attempts and many design changes before we could get it to work properly.

The discovery and invention of new things is one of the parts of our business that I like the most. Whether it is a funky window or a very different conservatory design or a new way of manufacturing that is more efficient, the process of continually inventing and improving upon what we do here at Tanglewood is very exciting for me.

There is of course a certain amount of risk that a company wanting to pursue a more conservative path would not incur. Sometime we get bitten, but not often. Over the years we’ve learned how to approach the unusual and we gathered people around us who share our interest and vision.

Not long ago, a potential client who wanted a really unusual greenhouse expressed his concern because we candidly admitted that we had not done anything like it before. I told him “we had never done anything like it before- but we do it all the time”. He understood what I meant- that we do what we’ve never done before all the time and he could see that we know how to do it!

Impressed with our work, which he could clearly see had the quality he was looking for, he gave us the job. Skeptical at first, he is now one of our most ardent proponents.

I hope we never stop “doing what we’ve never done before” here at Tanglewood. Many of our customers and friends do as well.

Alan

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

I just found out that the video of the copper-clad conservatory installation that Jim did in Montana was actually just put up on You Tube yesterday. He’s a natural with the camera. You can view it and our other videos on our YouTube Channel.

Alan

Installation Video of Copper Conservatory Project

One of our lead installation craftsmen has turned out to be quite a movie maker. We’ve nicknamed him “Spielberg”.

We asked him to document the last conservatory installation project—a job in Montana, and he came back with a video production fit for the “Modern Marvels” series!

This was a unique project in that the conservatory was completely clad with copper so we had to do quite a bit of on site specialty work. The location is also spectacular. It’s an island in the middle of a large lake with access only by water. All the parts and pieced had to be crated and moved by barge to the island.

While he and his partner were there, they also visited Glacier National Park and produced an exceptional video presentation of the exquisite scenery set to classical music.

We’re thinking of promoting him to VP of Conservatory Video Production. Check out his Shelter Island, Montana presentation on our site.

A client who purchased a Tanglewood Conservatory about 10 years ago, needed a new part for his operable skylight vent. We quickly figured out what part was needed and sent it to him right away, even though we had to cannibalize our inventory. He wanted to put the part in himself so we walked him through the process.

Here’s what he had to say afterwards:

Tim, I received the chain yesterday (Friday) and your technician— ME, installed it today.
Also I found that lubrication and applied it. It works lake a champ!

While I was up there 19’ I lubed the other chain too in the other motor. My recommendation is to lubed them every 5 years or 50,000 open/closing’s which ever occurs first!

Thanks for all your help and Tom too. As far as Alan goes, well he’s the boss so he doesn’t need any recognition!

Thanks Alan for all you do! I LOVE my conservatory!!!!!
John