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Tanglewood Conservatories Completes Major Steel and Glass Commission.
DECEMBER 2009 DENTON, MD- Tanglewood Conservatories' President and Director of
Architecture, Alan Stein has announced the completion of the company's largest "old-world-style"
steel and glass pool enclosure project. The completed building brings to fruition nearly three
years work by the company. The 2,600 square foot glass, steel and wood structure was designed
to enclose a swimming pool and spa for a prominent but unnamed client in the upper Midwest.
Mr. Stein noted: "This project is perhaps the most ambitious and unusual that
Tanglewood Conservatories has ever undertaken and its successful completion represents a major
milestone for the company." According to Stein, it was designed to be a modern rendition of the
great glass houses of the Nineteenth-Century and is now the model for several other projects that
the company has been commissioned to design and construct.
Among the unique features of the large conservatory are structural steel members
built up from individual steel plates. Mr. Stein noted that the more usual method of constructing
a large steel structure was to use pre-manufactured steel tubes and "I" beams. "This new method
allowed us to give the structural elements much more of a three-dimensional quality, as they would
have had 150 years ago." "One of our engineers spent an entire year working on this project",
mentioned Stein.
In discussing the project, Mr. Stein says: "The cast iron and steel parts with
their forged curls and intricate rosettes make a tantalizingly reminiscent image that could be
right out of a history book on the great glass houses of the Nineteenth-Century. This was our
intention from the start. In fact, it was the great glass conservatory at Syon Park in London,
which was the original inspiration for the design".
Special stained glass panels were designed by Tanglewood to enhance the large
custom pool house. "We were not only interested in the design of the glass panels themselves,
but more important, the mystical quality of the ever-changing pattern of colors which are
thrown into the interior of the space."
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