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

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

I just spoke with an architect about an interesting conservatory project he was working on. The design was for a green house that was to be reminiscent of an old-world conservatory to be used as a showcase for a botanical collection.

I wanted to point out the differences between a typical “modern” wood frame conservatory, the kind that is often used to expand and enhance living space and an actual greenhouse.

Many companies will use their wood conservatory system – systems which are designed to enclose living space, as a greenhouse. This has two problems. The first is that the structure itself is not designed to handle the environment and the functionality of a greenhouse.

The second, is that these systems will never begin to capture the exquisite lines and proportions that are the extraordinary feature of the greenhouses of the nineteenth century. They are reasonable facsimiles to the untrained eye no doubt, but not the real thing.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

The project shown here:

is the interior of the dome of a greenhouse that we built which uses small overlapping panes of glass to effect the curvature of the domes. This technique allows the structural members to be much lighter than a typical wood conservatory. It also allows for the modulation in their sizes that adds interest to the structure. This is much more characteristic of the older historic conservatories.

Compare the interior look of the dome shown in this picture:

one of Tanglewood’s “modern” wood conservatories, to see the difference.

Also compare the character and detail of the exterior of the dome shown here:

with that shown in the picture here:

The smaller pieces of glass in the top picture are even scalloped at the bottom, a small but crucial detail!

Though Tanglewood designs and builds many of its hardwood conservatories as elegant living spaces, when asked to design and build a greenhouse, we look to their historical roots. These elegant, romantic and oftentimes sheer feats-of-engineering can’t help but inspire anyone who looks closely at – and cares about the details.

As a tribute to these great grandfathers of the conservatories we design and build, we’ve added a new section to our website called “Our Heritage” (a subsection under Our Firm) in which we will showcase many of our favorite examples. Some are very well known, some mainly undiscovered. Most are American, many already renovated, some in much need of loving care.

Alan