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

Tree houses are like Conservatories. I’m as much in love with great tree houses as I am great conservatories. In many ways they are quite similar.

Both conservatories and tree houses are unconventional building types and lend themselves to creative unconventional design solutions. Both wear their structure in a way that all can see. If done well, both conservatories and tree houses become really cool spaces and they are both synonymous with being in an enclosed space while still being “out in nature”.

A few months ago, after I posted the videos of the guitar factories, Olivia who is lead in our assembly department, sent me the following pictures of really some cool tree houses.

Check out these amazing pictures courtesy of her.

Alan

Oftentimes, Nancy and I get to work as part of a team of very talented professionals. These are some of our best projects and we enjoy the team approach best.

As it turns out, successful architects these days are increasingly successful team builders. With building products becoming more complex and technical, a successful project with a happy, satisfied customer often demands multiple team players each bringing specialized expertise to the job.

With a conservatory, the challenges are great because the building is so unique. Few architects or builders have had much experience with conservatory or greenhouse construction. Issues such as heating and cooling, wiring and structural loading can be difficult enough but when you realize the conservatory is not constructed using standard parts like 2 x 4’s or with the standard construction details that most architects and builders are familiar with, the challenges to great design can become daunting.

Therefore, the architect has a challenge to design a building that they do not know how will be built. This can lead to having to compromise on design ideas or details so that they will conform to a manufactures typical details or blowing out the budget completely with something totally custom. Sometimes the result is a building that though the client loves the design, the project comes in over budget and sometimes, it may never gets built.

So, how can this be prevented? One of the best methods that many architects, designers and builders have been using is to bring in the experts early.

Someone who knows their specialty is able to simultaneously work both the design side of the issues as well as the budget side so that at the end of the process, there are no surprises.

The project pictured above is a great example of how to do it right. The architect was designing a new home and produced an initial concept of the conservatory and then asked us to take over. We worked back and forth, the architect reviewing our schemes and making comments and suggestions as we went but relying heavily on our expertise.

The end result is a great project and a very happy customer.

Alan

Rob Ryan sent me the link to this video tour of the Original Fender Guitar Factory shot back in 1959!

This is a great video clip for anyone who has an interest in woodworking and in how thinks are made or in production processes. Knowing something about production processes for extremely high quality wood products I can relate to much of what I see here. I am especially fond of it because it shows the fledgling company making product by hand. I could relate to the scenes of guys cutting parts out on the different types of power saws and the apparent skill you can sense in their working the parts. There is a guy cutting out each guitar body one at a time on a band saw. It looks like he does the necks as well just using his eye as a guide. It reminds me of our roots 20 years ago, in particular, before the introduction of our CNC technology. I also like the guitar lick in the background.

If you look at this video, notice the guys playing the guitars on the shop floor at the very end of the clip. These guys could play these instruments and it’s very obvious that they really enjoyed doing it – probably under the guise of testing the products! I can see the pride that they have in producing these instruments all over their faces as they fool around jamming with the finished guitars.

So I was curious to see what the Fender production process looks like now and I found it in another video showing how the work is done today. This is video was done in their new shop in Corona, California.

Aside from being in a much more modern looking space, I was interested to see that though they have automated many facets of the production process, a lot of the work was still done by hand. I was especially surprised to see that some of the work which I thought lent itself to being automated was done by hand.

There a couple of cool shots of auto sanding machines doing the necks and other parts but it looks like they still cut the slots for the frets and insert the frets by hand.

Of course there are dust masks and other hazmat precautions in place as you would expect that weren’t in the older factory.

I love to look at these videos because they show me how others do some of the same things we do at Tanglewood. Sometimes, I see something and think wow, that would improve how we do something, other times, I think, wow, we are far ahead of them and could teach them a few things!

I also came across a video of a production plant in China making what looked like knock offs or reproductions of the Fender guitars.

This was also an eye opener as the Chinese plant looked much like the Fender plant did in 1959 but not nearly as well organized. In fact it looks like a complete mess. It is also evident that they lack the level of care that you can see in the people at the Fender shop. Though the work was pretty much being done by hand in the same way, it’s a completely different world. Also missing was any kind of hazmat control.

When it comes time to “test out” the finished guitars, the Chinese technician merely checks the tuning and functioning of the instrument with no such joy as the guys at the old Fender plant. I guess the electric guitar does not hold the same exalted place in popular culture and it does in the west.

Check out these videos.

Alan

Among the many historic castles scattered throughout the countryside in the Czech Republic, there are two that have beautiful conservatories of historic significance and are open to the public. We visited both on our recent trip.

Near the southeast border, not far from Vienna, Austria is the town of Lednice, the best-known tourist destination in this southern area known as Moravia. This is the warmest part of the country and it is full of romantic nooks, architectural jewels and unique nature reserves.

The Neo-Gothic Chateau Lednice has an extensive park which is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a large steel, iron and glass conservatory of absolutely fantastic structural design. It was originally constructed in 1843.

The conservatory building is striking. At over 300 feet long, it is made of small, delicately shaped iron ribs spaced close enough together so that no additional structural beams are used. The pieces of glass are small and are used in the traditional method of overlapping shingles to create the curvature of the roof.

The real significance of this historic conservatory however lies in the way that the architect, an Englishman named P.H. Devian, used the panes of glass themselves as structural “shear” panels to give the overall building the required rigidity and wind resistance normally accomplished with the use of steel columns and beams. This was a scheme inspired by architect John Claudius Loudon and used in several of his glass buildings in England. It represented an audacious departure from the status quo of structural engineering design of the day.

To allow the glass itself to take on structural capabilities was a unique innovation and yielded a transparency never before obtained in a building. Even today, structural engineering dictates that the structure itself must be sufficient to support itself without relying on glass or any other “infill” material.

One of the most illustrative features of this design concept are the large arched windows that project out from the curved roof structure.

There is nothing but a small iron rib that joins the surface of the window to the surface of the main roof. The flimsy steel frame would hardly stand up in a slight wind without the help of the glass to make it rigid.

The conservatory at Lednice was also one of the first to use iron for all its parts which was much stronger and long lasting than the wood parts previously in use.

This steel and glass skylight at the entrance to the conservatory at Lednice does not have a structural member at the ridge, but relies on the stiffness of the glass itself – another example of the technical daring by the architect described above.

To the west of Lednice in the Bohemia region, is the Schwarzenberg Castle in the town of Hluboka nad Vltavou. Built in 1847 by architect Franz Beer, this beautiful conservatory also uses iron ribs for support but unlike the conservatory at Lednice, the entire structure is supported internally by steel trusses – a much different and much less innovative approach than at Lednice.

One interesting feature of the Hlubloka conservatory is the way in which cast iron ornamentation is used on the exterior façade of the building. These decorative pieces are in no way related to any structural requirements, but are solely “stuck –on” to the building to give it a certain “look”.

Unlike the conservatory at Lednice, which one could say was a very straightforward, “honest” expression of what it is made of – in that it uses it’s structure as its aesthetic – the Hluboka building turns it’s back on itself and tries to cover what it is made of and become something else.

I wonder if this is a reflection of the personalities and insight of the architects themselves – and maybe their clients. Was P.H. Devian a man who was much more comfortable with himself and his capabilities than was Franz Beer? As artists, their works must be expressions of what is inside each of them. I think this question could also be asked of architects and designers today. What does an architect or an artist’s work tell us about what is inside the person creating the works?

This stairway inside the conservatory at Hluboka is one of my favorites and the only conservatory dedicated to enclose a stairway I’ve ever seen.

Alan

Our next stop was Graz, the Austrian city which is the capital of the Styrian region in the south of the country. Graz is a lovely old city with 44,000 students at the six universities, which makes it a very lively town.

To arrive at Graz, we traveled the mountain road to the ski resort town of Obertauern high in the Austrian Alps. The town was mostly deserted but the beautiful mountains still had patches of snow covering them.

In the town of Graz, we also found an interesting contrast between old and new. On the old palace grounds, which is now a park, stood this lovely old conservatory unused and somewhat in disrepair.

A building such as this is often termed an orangery as the roof does not have glass in it. Orangeries were the original conservatory buildings, a type of structure that was used to winter citrus trees and other exotic plants (conserve them) dating back as far as Roman times. This is a particularly beautiful and well proportioned example of an orangery conservatory with the glass central atrium solidly anchored by the classically detailed masonry structures on either end.

On the other side of town is one of the most important new buildings, the Kunsthaus Graz (art museum) built in 2000 by Architects Colin Fournier and Peter Cook, who won an international competition for the design.

This building also uses glass as its external “skin”, much like a traditional conservatory, and is also used to “conserve” and display rare artwork just as the historic conservatories were used to conserve and display rare plants.

At first glance, this piece of contemporary architecture is about as far from the traditional conservatory as one could get and makes a radical statement about the value of history and the desire for modernity in the city of Graz. The building is in such stark contrast to its surroundings it could be said to turn its back on everything else in the city.

In many ways though, it perfectly echoes the historic conservatory as a building type. Many of the old conservatories were radical structures of their day (and even now) their sinuous, improbable glass facades seemingly appearing more as glass bubbles than combination of walls and roofs.

These glass conservatory buildings celebrated the new technologies of the industrial revolution just as the Kunsthaus Graz celebrates modern technology in much the same way. Its curvilinear free form not much different from the flowing glass surfaces of some of the great historic conservatories of the past.

Even the use of the building is similar.

Next, we travel to Vienna to see the great Palm House conservatory in the Schönbrunn Palace gardens and then onto Bratislava, the beautiful old-world capital of Slovákia.

Alan

Yesterday, Nancy and I visited with some friends who are planning a conservatory addition to their suburban home. We met with them and the general contractor they had selected to work on the project which includes the custom conservatory, a swimming pool enclosure for an endless pool located below the new conservatory and an exercise room adjacent to the indoor swimming pool enclosure.

When we arrived, they were struggling with a thorny planning issue involving the floor heights of the new rooms below the conservatory.

Since the existing home has several steps going down into the living room which is the room the new conservatory will be attached to, to achieve adequate head height in the swimming pool enclosure below, the floor level would end up being below the level of a small but charming outdoor patio they loved.

No one liked the idea of having to step up from floor of the pool enclosure and exercise rooms to get outside to the patio. This would create a potential problem with water tending to run into the new rooms so a number of elaborate schemes were being discussed to alleviate the problem when Nancy and I arrived.

Of importance to our friends was that the floor levels of the new lower rooms, the swimming pool enclosure and the exercise room be on the same level with the outside patio so that the spaces flowed smoothly one into the other. The concept was that all three spaces would feel as if they were extensions of each other.

We joined the discussion, looked at the outside of the house where the patio was and thought, maybe a simple solution would be to just lower the patio a bit. After all, it was not a large patio and some of the brickwork looked like it might need repair anyway. With lots of other construction and excavation going on right next to it, it might need to get rebuilt anyway.

After some discussion, we all agreed that was the best solution as it would preserve the simplicity of the design concept of the three spaces.

Now, on to the conservatory part of the project.

Alan

We recently received an email from Ken Tate, the project architect for the large renovation project that incorporated a Tanglewood Conservatories steel and glass pool pavilion. Ken is a pretty high level architect and has been named as one of the top 100 architects by Architectural Digest magazine. It was for the project that was featured in Architectural Digest magazine in July and included a full page interior picture of the custom pool house we designed and built.

Ken wanted us to have a testimonial from him and wrote:

“My experiences with Tanglewood Conservatories have been exceptional ones…from the early design and coordination phase, to the shop drawing and construction phases. Tanglewood is a couture conservatory company, meaning that every detail is custom designed and all shop construction is overseen personally by the owner Alan Stein himself! And Alan, being an architect, is always refining the smallest details. My first project with Tanglewood was featured in “Architectural Digest “ (July 2010 page 89) as part of a feature article on the house that the conservatory was attached to. So, the “proof-is-in-the-pudding”.

Ken Tate Architect

Aside from just being a great recommendation and making us feel really good, Ken points to one of the defining features of Tanglewood Conservatories. While many conservatory builders refer to themselves as “custom” or “bespoke”, what they are mainly commenting on is their ability to mix and match their standard parts to make different looking conservatories.

What we did for Ken was to conceive an entirely new way to build a conservatory, using entirely new materials – steel and glass instead of wood, based on his desire to have an “old world” steel and glass conservatory.

The fact that Tanglewood Conservatories is willing and able to explore with architects and clients how best to achieve their vision without limitation– no matter where it leads, is what makes the company’s approach completely unique.

Yes, other conservatory builders make conservatories that look like some of ours and we make some that look like theirs, but Tanglewood is pretty unique when it comes to our ability to listen to our clients, both their expressed desires as well as the not as obvious ones and to build rooms that capture the essence of their dream in great ways they had not even thought of.

Alan

I hope everyone has had a chance to look at the new video’s we’ve posted in the video section of our site. They are also linked from our Homepage in the area called Latest Video.

The ones titled “A View Inside –
Tanglewood recreates the grand conservatory at Biltmore Estate are very interesting. Part One shows a very unique conservatory project being created in our workshop and Part Two shows the installation of the same custom conservatory on the job site. It gives everyone more of an insight as to how our beautiful conservatories are created.

This particular custom conservatory had as it’s inspiration, the great historic conservatories at the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina. On the estate are several conservatories, the one on the main house which is just off the main entrance hall being the one that the owner of this latest Tanglewood conservatory project fell in love with and wanted Tanglewood to recreate.

The other classic conservatories are in the garden and serve horticultural purposes. These are beautiful steel and glass greenhouses much like many of the other grand conservatories of the age.

The conservatory video titled: “The Design Process-
Working together with clients to create their dream conservatory” is about how our process works with a client when we are designing their conservatory. This is the story of our journey with the owners to create their dream conservatory.

From our first meeting with Molly and Michael, it was clear that theirs would be a most unusual project. They were actually looking for a custom designed greenhouse at first but after visiting Tanglewood’s workshop decided in favor of one of our beautiful mahogany conservatories instead. The custom greenhouse would come later.

I hope everyone takes a look at these videos.

Alan

Drew Greenblatt, CEO Marlin Steel Wire Products, myself, Greg Moores, Senior Product Designer, DeWalt tools, and Mike Galliazo, Founder of the Regional Manufacturing Institute at our presentation to the Woodworking Industry Conference.

My recent trip to Monterey, California was a huge success. I was invited to participate in the Woodworking Industry Conference as a panelist discussing “Going $ Green; What woodworking companies are doing to become green”.

Conference attendees were interested to hear about Tanglewood’s multifaceted approach to sustainability and green issues. We feel it is important to keep pushing our conservatory company to become better stewards of the environment and the resources we use.

At the conference, I spoke about our efforts to become a completely paperless company, to reuse as much of our scrap material as possible, to utilize raw materials form sustainable sources and to incorporate cutting edge technology into our products and processes.

One of the most exciting aspects of our push towards greater green is the introduction of existing green technologies into our projects. The use of photovoltaic’s is a great example. There are presently glass products on the market that act both as photovoltaic generation panels and semi-transparent panes of glass that can be incorporated into the roof or windows of a “green” conservatory. This technology has been available for several years and is getting better all the time.

One client recently approached us with a request to use such a product in his conservatory design and we were able to locate a source and design it into his conservatory.

At the conference, I also spoke about other opportunities for incorporating green technologies into our conservatories through the inclusion of products already fairly commonplace in buildings such as geothermal heating and cooling, LED lighting and wind turbines for electricity generation. The object of using these products is to lessen the energy impact of a conservatory (or any other type of building) project.

There is already a lot of interest in this kind of inclusive broad based approach to the greening of our projects.

These kinds of specialized solutions fit well with Tanglewood’s design philosophy which values the complete flexibility to respond to each customer’s unique requests whether technological, architectural or functional.

Alan

What do Hot Rods and conservatories have in common?

One of our shop guys brought this magazine article to my attention recently. He is an avid owner and builder of Hot Rods, souped up classic stock cars, and he reads the magazines on breaks and lunch.

I’ve been aware of the resurgence of interest in both great classic conservatories and great classic cars but I’ve never connected them before.

Both of these have a home in my heart. As a youngster, I like many boys my age, loved cars. The freedom of having your own car – at a time when not every kid had a car, was intoxicating. Most of us could not afford anything very nice or very new so we had to learn how to take an old clunker and fix it up into a really sweet rod. We’d swap out the engines and trans to get something with more power, add a hood scoop and a custom paint job, cool wheels and we’d be set to show it off.

It was a terrific creative outlet. Before I knew anything about “creating art”, the cars and bikes that I built myself, were my pieces of art. Their creation required the same sensitivity that any designer exercises. I also learned to use my own hands to make things and to discipline myself so that I could accomplish some really big projects which took a lot of time.

Later in life, when my interest turned to conservatories and building a company, many of the skills and lessons I learned applied.

The great classic conservatories were also an inspiration to me as we set about figuring out how to create Tanglewood’s buildings. I loved the sense of novelty and the creativity that their builders evidently had. After all, back in the nineteenth century, conservatories were a new building type and it was up to the architects and builders of the time to figure out how to create such fantastic structures.

They had use of the new technology of the Industrial Revolution which made iron, steel and large pieces of glass available and their ability to devise structural systems and express them as architectural designs was limited only by their imagination.

I realized however, as I set about essentially the same task 100 years later, that times had changed. No longer, for example, were custom made parts such as cast iron widely available at low cost. Modern building systems, themselves highly standardized (think 2 x 4’s and 4 x 8 sheets), render it impossible to create the kind of conservatory I wanted. I tried in the beginning but could not come close to the look of the beloved “old ones”.

Often, people come to us looking for just a glass roof system to go onto standard construction walls. I always feel that an opportunity to create a really great room has been missed. Usually it is the result of budget constraints.

Now however, I find ourselves in the midst of another Industrial Revolution. It seems to me that for years, the systems that developed to achieve the efficiencies of mass production and led to standardization, have forced everyone to build basically the same stuff. There are lot’s of different ways to arrange all those standardized pieces (windows, bricks, pieces of steel, plywood), into varying shaped buildings but if you’re limited to using these standardized pieces, it’s very difficult to invent something really new.

With the arrival in the last ten years of relatively inexpensive CNC (computer-operated) machinery, the equation has been changed and short runs of highly custom items are feasible again – maybe for the first time in 100 years. It might have been Henry Ford who put an end to it last time and we’ve been thinking that more and more standardization is best ever since!

I think the reason people love conservatories is just because they are so unique, so different from every other room in their house. By placing the classic car in front of the conservatory, the author makes a great point. It’s not just that interest has been rekindled in many things that embody classic design but the creative inventiveness and ingenuity of the guy customizing the car is akin to the creative inventiveness and ingenuity embodied in these great old conservatory buildings.

I’d take it a step further and say that the creative inventive spirit behind the car and the conservatory is also behind our company as well.

The author says of the cars’ creator, a man named Alex Test: “…his passion has always been custom work. As far back as he can recall, he has had the urge to modify. His “mad scientist” mentality hasn’t stopped yet.”

I read that and thought of our work here at Tanglewood Conservatories.

By the way, the conservatory is in Detroit.

Alan