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

Mehmet standing in front of the building

Our Senior Designer Mehmet just returned from a two week vacation during which he traveled throughout the beautiful rugged highlands of northern Scotland. He went as far north as the Orkney Islands. Mehmet has been making regular trips like this to wonderful and exotic places a couple of times each year since he’s been with Tanglewood – now almost fifteen years!

His love of beautiful, unspoiled, authentic locales has led him through Western and Eastern Europe, to Morocco, the Americas and to his homeland Turkey many times.

One legacy of these wonderful trips has been an amazing library of photographs particularly focused on the architecture. Often he’ll shoot just a window or a doorway or a small detail of a building framed in the most artistic manner. Sometimes these serve as inspiration for Tanglewood projects current or future. Much of the unique character of Tanglewood’s work is the result of his artistic and creative capabilities.

We’re of course always interested in the conservatories he visits and photographs from around the world.

Edinburgh Conservatory

The classic shot that is often used when photographing the Edinburgh Conservatory.

Here is his photograph of the great Tropical Palm House at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh Scotland. It was built in 1858 and is the second oldest in Great Britain. Designed by R. Matheson, it was built to replace an older structure when the palm trees grew so tall that they protruded through the roof. It is also one of the tallest conservatories at 22 meters. Note the human sized doorway and you’ll get a sense of the scale of the building!

Kibble Palace Conservatory

Mehmet in front of the Kibble Palace conservatory built in 1865 at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens in Scotland.

Kibble Palace Conservatory Interior

The Kibble Palace conservatory is an amazing structure as it almost seems to be covered with a “plastic” material (which of course glass actually is).

Look at the fantastic sweeping curves and the amazing lack of support “structure” shown in this photograph. Could this REALLY be a glass structure? Truly, it is a “glass skin” but unlike the modernist concept which supports the skin with a separate articulated structure, this skin is also the skeleton itself attached to the earth only around the perimeter and a few places in between.

Kibble Palace Conservatory Exterior

This is Mehmet’s photograph of the exterior of the Kibble conservatory. It appears as hardly more than an elegantly formed, solidified soap bubble. No wonder we all fell in love with these fantastic buildings!

From its very beginnings, Tanglewood Conservatories has been inspired by these majestic architectural expressions and sought to bring the same creative ingenuity that brought them to life into all our modern-day conservatory projects.

Alan

Since I was last showing images of my trip to Germany and some of the great copper domes and lanterns that I find an inspiration for our work, I thought I’d show another source of inspiration for our woodworking skills.

These beautiful mahogany “taxi cabs” are everywhere in Venice, probably more prolific that the fabled gondolas. Every time I saw a really great example of one going by, I vowed to expand our business into this new area of production!

Here’s another interesting sight. This was the dining room of a very upscale restaurant in Germany with a glass conservatory roof. Notice the live tree growing right through the glass ceiling. What a flashing nightmare!!!

Alan

Some of the features of the landscapes and cityscapes I found especially enchanting in Germany were the extraordinary copper domes that are everywhere.

It seemed that every small village we passed through had at least one church or town square with a tower with an exotic copper dome on it. These were a real inspiration for me because of the recent work we’re been doing with copper domes ourselves. (see our new page on Domes, Lanterns & Skylights in the Our Portfolio section.)

Some of the constructions were of more or less familiar shapes though frequently quite ornate but some of them were so exotic, I could not help wondering at their origin or inspiration. There were also many fine examples of Romanesque and Baroque architecture which I found particularly interesting.

Here are some of the pictures I took. Some are very poor quality because they were taken from a moving vehicle; however I wanted to show them anyway because they were so unusual.

This tower with its copper bell shaped roof is a good example of one of the more recognizable forms. It has a great shape and proportions. Do a quick calculation and see if you can get a sense of the height of that steeple finial! We’ve built some of these recently though not as large.

Now these are what I mean by unusual. Who would have ever thought up a shapes like this, much less try to build them?

This one was very strange to me. The picture is really poor but you can get a sense of the unusual shape. The next picture shows how it rises above everything else in this small village.

This one is a very typical shape in the part of Germany I was traveling through. I can just imagine the fun someone must have had going around designing and creating these fantastic structures.

Here’s an interesting roof shape from the Prince Bishops medieval residence in Wurtzburg. This one is shingled instead of clad with copper, which I think would be even harder to do. You’d have to make sure the shingles stayed in place even when applied almost upside down and that it wouldn’t leak for the next several centuries.

This is a small Romanesque chapel with a copper dome.

And this, a small Baroque chapel with a much more ornate copper dome, also in Wurtzburg.

This was a very typical shape seen all over the region.

This copper dome roof sits on top of what must be a very cool room on the inside.

This unusual building is actually a crane used some time ago to unload the river barges that are still active on the rivers throughout the region today. It sits alongside the Main River (pronounced Mayan) along which runs a lovely river walk and must be the forerunner of the large cargo cranes seen today at every seaport in the world. The top of the building, which is the copper clad dome, rotates and the arms of the crane are made out of large wood members clad with copper sheet metal.

Alan

Today, I leave Munich Germany for my return trip to the US. This has been a really great experience – in no small part because of the skill and experience of our trip coordinator Lorraine.

As she has frequently pointed out, her successful trip should combine one third educational experience – learning about trends in the woodworking industry, seeing how other industry professionals in Europe work and learning about some of the equipment that is available to us, one third “camaraderie”, as she calls it, by which she refers to the interaction between all of us participants and the direct and indirect benefits we all gain from rubbing elbows for a week with industry colleagues. And one third, the culture – the opportunity to experience another country, another culture and to visit interesting places, expand our view of the world and our understanding of how it got to be as it is.

I’d also emphasize a fourth key element to the success of a trip like this – to have some one else, who really knows what they are doing, set it all up for you! This was particularly appreciated.

I haven’t mentioned the Homag groups’ line of products much. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical of participating in an organized trip sponsored by any one particular supplier as I thought the presentation would be too heavily slanted.

While we did get quite an education about the Homag Group and its products, I was impressed by the way our Homag hosts (and beer drinking buddies) tried to present a very broad range of solutions to common industry issues by using real world examples. These were demonstrated by the shops and factories we visited, not all of which were filled with Homag equipment.

For example, we witnessed first hand how a small, a mid-sized and then a very large company produced windows in Germany. We got to see the decisions each company had made about how to go about making their products, what production steps they used and what technology they were using.

This was a real eye opener for me. In some cases, I saw what were clearly better methods of production than Tanglewood currently uses and in other cases, I left thinking that we were actually doing certain steps more efficiently than what I had seen.

The companies that we visited were almost all extremely open about sharing what they were doing and answering all of our questions. It was very obvious that they all had an extremely positive relationship with Homag.

At least one participant, when asked about something unexpected that happened to them on the trip, remarked that they hadn’t expected to leave thinking they needed a new CNC machine!

But now I’m glad to return home. Spring was just barely evident in many of the areas we passed through and in some places there was still plenty of snow on the ground. We even drove through a few snow squalls on the way. I wasn’t expecting that.

Alan

I’ve been spending many hours looking out of the humongous front window of this fantastic futuristic looking tour bus. From my seat right at the front of the bus high on the upper level, I feel as though I’m on the bridge of a Star Cruiser as we pass through the many lovely small villages and towns in Bavaria and the surrounding Black Forest region. The factories that we have been visiting are spread out, many in tiny towns often nestled among a small residential cluster of homes!

We’ve visited small woodworking shops that produce a variety of items from wood windows to conservatories to furniture to cabinets using only a few machines and a small workforce. We’ve also visited several major manufacturing facilities with hundreds of workers. We’ve also spent time at the Homag plant and the Fritz plant near Stuttgart.

Interestingly enough, the machine manufacturing plants were some of the most useful visits for me. Because Homag and Friz produce a large percentage of their machines on a custom basis, their engineering design to manufacturing processes, though much larger in scale than Tanglewood Conservatories, had some real similarities.

I was intrigued to see them dealing with some of the same issues that are also on our plate and in fact I thought we had made more progress in some areas.

Last night there was dinner and great German beer at the famous Hofbrauhaus in Munich which is without a doubt, the largest beer hall I have ever seen! Three levels of raucous eating and drinking filled with many foreign tourists.

One of the facets of the plants that we visited which has impressed me was their regard for energy conservation. Costs of fuel are of course substantially higher here than in the US so they are forced to be more conservation minded. Most of the facilities made extensive use of day lighting- the use of large skylights and windows to illuminate their interior spaces. There was one building we went into that needed no artificial lights at all even though it was a fairly cloudy day. We can certainly learn a lesson from them on this subject.

Alan

Greeting from Wurzburg, Germany where I’ve traveled to take part in a nine day Tour of Technology with a group of industry pro’s looking at manufacturing technology solutions specifically geared towards window, door and solid wood production.

We will be touring facilities in the localities of Wurzburg, Stuttgart, and Munich and end our tour in Nurnberg at the Fensterbau Show, the International Window/Door Exhibition.

Our group is being graciously hosted by the Stiles Machinery Group of Grand Rapids, Michigan who represents numerous lines of machinery for the woodworking industry among which is Homag CNC machining centers.

So far, I’ve been here since Saturday and we’ve spent the weekend exploring the small city of Wurtzburg, population approximately 130,000 and sampling the very excellent German cuisine and beer. Lorraine, our CMP (certified meeting professional) has done the most amazing job in organizing the activities and picking out top notch accommodations and restaurants. Amazingly, this is the 30th international trip she has organized and participated in for Stiles.

Yesterday we had an extremely well informed professional tour guide show us some of the sights that included the heavily fortified fortress-residence (there was no conservatory) of the former Prince Bishop, religious and political head of the Franconia region. The area is now part of Bavaria, having been taken over sometime in the middle ages. We also toured the main Cathedral in the city, saw a lovely Gothic chapel and walked along the Main River which flows through the middle of the city. Spent lot’s of time walking around. It is a very pedestrian friendly town.

Today we start the off looking at woodshops of various sizes, capabilities and specialties. Wednesday we will spend all day at the Homag plant in Stuttgart learning about the different machines they offer.

It should be a very interesting week. Already I’ve gained many valuable insights just through the contact with the other tour participants. We come from all different areas of the US (including a contingent from Hawaii) and represent all different sizes companies and business specialties.

One of the things I’ve learned is just how much I can learn from talking with other people who do similar things as we do in our business. Not just about the specifics of production of wood parts, but about business strategies, management styles and lot’s of other great stuff that I’ll talk about throughout the week.

Alan