Crystal Palace
Sir Joseph Paxton, 1850-1851
IdentityPost-1850
Overview
About This Work
The Crystal Palace was a revolutionary architectural structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. Built in just five months, the colossal temporary building was a masterpiece of Victorian engineering, measuring 1,848 feet (564 metres) long and covering 19 acres—three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral. It was constructed almost entirely from prefabricated cast iron and plate glass, earning its name from Punch magazine. The building was not just a venue but the exhibition's primary exhibit, symbolizing the industrial and imperial might of Britain. After the exhibition closed, the structure was dismantled and rebuilt (in an enlarged and permanent form) at Sydenham Hill in South London, where it stood until it was destroyed by fire in 1936.
Visual Analysis
Composition
The Barrel Vault: While the main body of the building was flat-roofed (resembling a stepped pyramid), the central transept featured a soaring barrel-vaulted roof. This was a late addition to the design, famously included to enclose several mature elm trees growing in Hyde Park that protesters refused to let Paxton cut down. The curved transept gave the building a focal point and a grand, cathedral-like entrance.
Colour & Light
Transparency: The interior was unprecedented in its vastness and luminosity. With no internal walls and slender iron supports, the space felt infinite. The boundary between the building and the sky seemed to disappear.
Owen Jones's Polychromy: The interior ironwork was not black or white, but painted in a controversial primary colour scheme by Owen Jones (author of The Grammar of Ornament). Using his theory of colour proportion, Jones painted the columns in alternating stripes of blue, red, and yellow. Although critics feared it would look garish, the optical blending of the colours at a distance created a harmonious, atmospheric haze that Jones argued defined the space.
Materials & Technique
Iron and Glass: The building marked a decisive break from the tradition of heavy masonry architecture (stone and brick). Instead, it was a "ferrovitreous" structure—a skeleton of cast iron columns and wrought iron girders infill with nearly 300,000 panes of hand-blown glass. This dissolved the visual barrier between interior and exterior, creating a space flooded with light.
Modular Design: Paxton designed the entire building based on a single module: the maximum size of a sheet of glass available at the time (49 inches x 10 inches). Every column, girder, and sash bar was a multiple of this unit. This allowed for mass production and rapid assembly, anticipating modern prefabrication techniques.
Ridge and Furrow Roof: The roof utilized Paxton's patented "ridge-and-furrow" glazing system, originally developed for his greenhouses at Chatsworth. The zig-zag profile ensured that rainwater drained quickly into the hollow iron columns (which doubled as drainpipes) and that sunlight entered at an angle, reducing glare and heat buildup.
Historical Context
Context
The Great Exhibition of 1851
Prince Albert's Vision: The exhibition was the brainchild of Prince Albert and civil servant Henry Cole. Its purpose was to showcase the "Works of Industry of All Nations," promoting free trade, peace, and—crucially—British manufacturing superiority. It was the first World's Fair.
The Competition: A building committee (including architects like Charles Barry) initially rejected 245 designs for a brick-and-mortar structure because they would be too expensive, dark, and permanent (ruining the park). Paxton, a gardener with no formal architectural training, sketched his glasshouse concept on a piece of blotting paper during a railway meeting. His design was cheap, temporary, and light-filled—solving all the committee's problems.
Paxton the Gardener
Greenhouse Roots: Paxton was the head gardener for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House. The technology for the Crystal Palace came directly from horticulture. He had previously built the Great Stove (a giant conservatory) and the Victoria Regia House (specifically designed to house the giant Amazonian water lily). The lily's ribbed leaf structure inspired the lightweight, ribbed iron structure of the Palace.
Industrial Revolution
Mass Production: The building was a triumph of the Industrial Revolution. It relied on the recent abolition of the Glass Tax (1845) and the ability of Birmingham factories (Chance Brothers for glass; Fox and Henderson for iron) to churn out standardized parts. It proved that industrial methods could produce architecture of beauty and scale.
Key Themes
Modernity and the Sublime / Nature vs. Culture
The "Technological Sublime": The Crystal Palace evoked a new kind of awe. Unlike the "Romantic sublime" of mountains or storms, this was a man-made wonder of rational calculation and engineering. Visitors described it as a "fairyland" or "magical," unable to comprehend how something so solid could look so weightless.
Democratization of Culture: The exhibition was visited by 6 million people (one-third of the British population), including many working-class people who travelled on the newly expanded railway network. The building was a "palace for the people," accessible to all classes (on "shilling days").
Enclosing Nature: By enclosing the living elm trees within the iron transept, the building symbolized the Victorian desire to master and categorize nature. It created an artificial climate where industry and nature coexisted under a glass sky.
Exam Focus Points
Critical Perspectives
Architecture vs. Engineering: The Crystal Palace is often cited as the beginning of modern architecture, yet it was not designed by an architect. It challenged the definition of architecture as "art" (masonry, classical orders, solidity). John Ruskin famously hated it, calling it a "cucumber frame" and denying it was architecture at all. It represents the split between the architect (aesthetic) and the engineer (functional).
Ephemeral Architecture: Discuss the concept of the temporary building. It was designed to be dismantled ("flat-packed") and moved. This anticipates the modular, flexible architecture of the 20th century (e.g., High-Tech architecture like the Pompidou Centre).
Comparison to Gothic: Surprisingly, Paxton compared his building to a Gothic cathedral—not in style, but in structural logic. Like a cathedral, it was a skeletal frame with non-structural infill (glass instead of stained glass) and emphasized verticality and light.