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

Friday has arrived and we are ready for the big day. Last night we ate dinner at the Munich Hoffbrau Haus (in Hamburg), just down the street from our hotel. We thought we wouldn’t get another chance to savor the wonderful sweet sauerkraut that had become our favorite in the south, so this was an unexpected and welcome last chance.

We arrived at the convention hotel about 2 hours before I was to speak, in time to listen to a presentation by architect Michael Schroder about the development and use of new technologies in glass and façade design. His firm, Schroder Architects from Bremen, specializes in the design of buildings that are almost completely energy neutral, in other words, need almost no outside heating and cooling to maintain the interior environment.

This is a subject that is very dear to me and it was quite clear that the Germans are far ahead of us here in America. One of the technologies they are developing is heat absorbing glass panels that absorb the solar heat during the day thereby keeping the interior of the building cool, and then releasing the heat into the building or into the atmosphere at night. I was very impressed. Michael mentioned that in fact, the energy efficiency certification standards in the US are only now where they were in Germany 7 years ago.

I addressed the group of conservatory manufacturers next and spoke of our work and the importance of design in building our brand. I showed lots of pictures of Tanglewood projects being built in our shop, erected on site and then completely finished. I showed examples of the intensive design process we use and talked about how we developed our unique approach.

Here I am speaking to 40 members of the Wintergarten-Fashverband group in Hamburg.

I felt privileged to have been invited to share our work and wanted to give everyone something that was of as much value to them as what they had given Nancy and I during the preceding week. I only hope to have been successful in this.

Unexpected!!! After my talk, association director, Franz Wurm surprised Nancy and I by inducting Tanglewood Conservatories into the Wintergarten-Fashverband of Germany and Austria (www.wintergarten-fachverband.de) as an Honorary member, the first time this has been done for a company outside of Germany or Austria.

Nancy and Alan receive Certificate of Honorary Membership in the Wintergarten-Fashverband of Germany and Austria.

It was clear to us that the way the German conservatory manufacturers approach their market (and as a result, the design and production of their product) was completely different than the way Tanglewood does. There was a strong feeling among the association members that customers in Germany would not be open to building the larger, more elaborate projects that are Tanglewood’s specialty. Still, I believe that the essence of our work – that of the importance of the design process, was not lost on anyone.

There was also something else which impressed Nancy and I immensely. Here were the owners of 40 companies, all in competition with each other, sitting together, learning about their industry together and even socializing together in a spirit of mutual cooperation!

I believe this is due in large part to the skill of the association director Franz Wurm, who organizes the activities and keeps the organization moving forward but also speaks volumes about the genuine openness of the German people- something that Nancy and I have been experiencing first hand all week long.

After my presentation, we were invited to join the group for a fabulous dinner cruise and private guided tour through the Hamburg harbor via boat.

Old and new mix on Hamburg’s historic waterfront.

Beautiful glass and copper dome seen from the harbor.

I’m at ease after my talk – and a few glasses of excellent German beer.

How did this get here?

Nancy and Alan with Werner Jechnerer. Note we are holding gifts he gave us, a drinking mug and a bottle used for aging the beer he makes at his home brewery which as I mentioned before, is some of the best in Germany! Thank you friend.

Tomorrow morning we leave for home. We look forward to the task of implementing the many lessons learned on our trip and to a return visit.

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland and all our wonderful new colleagues and dear friends! Thank you.

Alan

Nancy & Franz

Here Nancy and Franz Wurm, Director of the Wintergarten-Fachverband association, (I’m taking the picture) enjoy a drink at one of the many beautiful beergardens in Munich.

We’ve been in Munich for one day and have much to report.

One thing that always strikes me whenever I fly into Europe is the difference in the built landscape from what I’m used to seeing in the US. It is distinctively different from what you see flying across the American countryside.

In Europe, houses are clustered in much more distinct towns and villages, some very small yet still very distinct, whereas in the United States, they are spread out across the land. In Europe, there seems to be a much clearer line between where the houses and the town ends and where the farmland begins.

The ubiquitous American housing subdivision and the endless suburban sprawl, seems to be completely absent from the European landscape – a reality that makes me very satisfied whenever I notice it. I wonder though, what do the Europeans know about city and town planning that we don’t? How do they accomplish this and is there a danger that in the future, the American “cancer of the land” will spread there?

It might be that in Europe, land being in such short supply, over the generations people developed a sense of the importance and value of the farmland and are unwilling to desecrate the open spaces so easily.

Or perhaps, the European culture, so much older than the American, is used to the way cities and towns were laid out centuries ago when there was not the automobile to provide quick and easy transportation. Or maybe it was the need to cluster together for defensive purposes – but whatever the reason, the sense that the land is something not to be squandered is evident everywhere.

I don’t mean to say that people don’t need houses to live in and that new homes should not be built, but the European model of clustering them into villages and towns seems a much more logical and less wasteful approach.

Rather than digging up a piece of choice farmland in the middle of nowhere – which I see happen all over America, and plopping down the same model x,y,z houses at infinitum with no planning rhyme or reason other than how to get the most units onto an acre and maximize revenue from the development project, we should respect the age old principles of building places that we would really like to be in. I think we might be forced into this if we are to wake up to a more ecologically sustainable way of life, which is not a bad thing in my opinion.

Where would you rather spend a day off? In a “quaint” village or town in the Cotswolds, Tuscany or Maryland’s Eastern shore or the placeless subdivisions many call home.

Ok, enough of this.

Munich has wonderful beer gardens all over the city and the first thing we did when we arrived was to sample the local fare at one of the oldest and best known.

Beer (mixed with lemonade) is a favorite drink at mid day, and small sausages with the best sauerkraut I’ve ever had!

The people of Munich are some of the most laid-back and friendly I’ve encountered. We’ve had no trouble getting around knowing only two words of German, bitte (please) and danke (thank you).

We had dinner at a lovely little café near our hotel called Café Mozart. Our host named Armin took wonderful care of us, patiently translating the entire menu and recommending the best food, beer and schnapps! His suggestions where perfect, the beer, a dunkel (dark) Bavarian brew called Weizenbier with a yeasty overtone went down very smoothly!

Tomorrow, off to visit wintergarden factories with Franz, and then on to beautiful Wurtzburg.

Alan

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