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The Crystal Palace, Environmentally Considered Architectural Research Quarterly http://journals.cambridge.org/ARQ Additional services for Architectural Research Quarterly: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Crystal Palace, environmentally considered Henrik Schoenefeldt Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 12 / Issue 3-4 / December 2008, pp 283 - 294 DOI: 10.1017/S1359135508001218, Published online: 25 February 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135508001218 How to cite this article: Henrik Schoenefeldt (2008). The Crystal Palace, environmentally considered. Architectural Research Quarterly, 12, pp 283-294 doi:10.1017/S1359135508001218 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ARQ, IP address: 128.103.149.52 on 25 Jul 2016 history Paxton’s early ambitions for a unified system of environmental control involving mechanical and passive technologies were partially realised in the Crystal Palace of 1851. The Crystal Palace, environmentally considered Henrik Schoenefeldt In the nineteenth century, horticulturists such as principles of horticulture were discussed extensively John Claudius Loudon and Joseph Paxton, aware of in nineteenth-century horticultural literature such the new environmental possibilities of glasshouses Loudon’s Remarks on the Construction of Hothouses that had been demonstrated in the context of (1817), Paxton’s Magazine of Botany (1834-49) and the horticulture, contemplated the use of fully-glazed Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1812- structures as a means to creating new types of 44). Since the purpose of glasshouses was to facilitate environments for human beings. While Loudon the cultivation of an increasing variety of foreign suggested the use of large glass structures to plants in the temperate climate of Northern Europe, immerse entire Russian villages in an artificial the creation of artificial climates tailored to the climate,1 Henry Cole and Paxton envisioned large- specific environmental needs of plants became the scale winter parks, to function as new types of public primary object of the design. The glasshouses not spaces. These indoor public spaces were intended to only provided a context for the application of grant the urban population of London access to contemporary mechanical and structural clean air, daylight and a comfortable climate.2 technology, but also rendered visible the ecological Although glasshouses had only been experienced in dimension of the built environment, as for example, the immediate context of horticulture, designed in the effect of temperature, humidity, solar radiation accordance with the specific environmental and air movement on the health of plants. A wide requirements of foreign plants, rather than the range of horticulturists, surgeons, social and health requirements of human comfort and health,3 they 1 Paxton’s proposal for were perceived as a precedent for a new approach to an urban Sanitarium, architectural design primarily driven by 1851. Illustrated London News, 5 July environmental criteria. The environmental design 1851, p. 11 1 history arq . vol 12 . no 3/4 . 2008 283 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 25 Jul 2016 IP address: 128.103.149.52 284 arq . vol 12 . no 3/4 . 2008 history reformers contemplated applying the technical and mechanical equipment to regulate the internal environmental reasoning behind the horticultural climate could be adapted to create health enhancing glasshouse to the design of the built environment in environments for the population of large industrial general, with the intention of using glasshouses as a cities.7 These would comprise large spaces with an means of improving people’s health in major abundance of daylight, fresh air and a comfortable industrial cities.4 The horticulturist Joseph Paxton climate throughout the whole year. This pamphlet was a major proponent of this idea. outlined Paxton’s proposal for converting the Crystal Paxton articulated the larger social and Palace into a public winter garden and was part of a environmental aspirations behind his idea of public series of hypothetical projects in which he illustrated glasshouses in a number of hypothetical design his larger socio-environmental aspirations towards proposals and written accounts in pamphlets and the use of glasshouses for human functions. journal articles.5 When he received the commission Contemporary newspaper articles and pamphlets to design the Great Exhibition building, he was also indicate very clearly that the Crystal Palace from the able to put these ideas at least partially into practice. earliest stages in the design was conceived as a The Hyde Park Crystal Palace was a pioneering prototype of the kind of glass buildings that Paxton attempt to adapt the tradition of horticultural intended to promote as indoor public spaces. The glasshouses to human rather than plant habitation. first account of Paxton’s proposal for the Crystal Its history illustrates the difficulties of making fully- Palace in the Illustrated London News on 6 July 1850 glazed structures climatically suitable for human included a brief account of Paxton’s intention to beings. But as shown in a large number of convert the Crystal Palace into a public winter contemporary accounts detailing the extreme garden, which, by providing an expansive interior climatic conditions that periodically occurred inside space, would allow people to take extensive indoor the Crystal Palace during the Great Exhibition in promenades and coach rides whatever the season.8 In 1851, the ideal climate promised by the conceptual the summer, he proposed to remove the vertical glasshouses was not successfully delivered by the glazing to open the building up to its surrounding actual built form. landscape and to ‘give the appearance of a There are many publications which address the continuous park and garden’.9 In What is to be done history of the Crystal Palace in terms of its with the Crystal Palace and in a letter to the Times titled, construction and aesthetic, as for instance ‘Shall the Crystal Palace Stand or Not?’, Paxton gave a Hitchcock’s Early Victorian Architecture in Britain, more detailed description of his project and the Giedion’s Space Time and Architecture, McKean’s Crystal underlying environmental and social aspirations. Palace and Chadwick’s The Works of Sir Joseph Paxton.6 In Apart from providing a very large, well lit and contrast, the intention of this article is to discuss the sheltered space, the interior of the winter garden was environmental history of this building illustrating to comprise an autonomous artificial climate, how the environmental design aspirations insulated from the variable weather and the influenced its construction, form and spatial polluted atmosphere of nineteenth-century arrangement. It includes a discussion of Paxton’s London.10 The climate was to resemble the summer larger socio-environmental visions as a driving force climate of southern Italy during the winter, and behind the idea of glasshouses for human beings, a during the summer period the ‘winter temperature description of the environmental strategies and of that country […] would be about 10 degree colder technologies employed, and a study of the building’s than the ordinary heat of our dwelling houses’.11 In environmental performance. It compares the contrast to the Hyde Park building, with its climate that Paxton originally intended to achieve translucent roof which diffused the sunlight and the with the real climatic conditions which occurred opaque wooden infill panels on the ground floor, inside the building during the Great Exhibition. The both of which restricted the visual connection with latter is based on temperature measurements taken the outside, the envelope of the winter garden was during the period of the exhibition and written intended to be totally transparent. It was to facilitate accounts of people’s perception of the climate inside free admission of direct sunlight and to connect the the Crystal Palace. These measurements have interior visually with its surroundings, turning the hitherto not been discussed in print by architectural building into a display case through which the historians but are crucial if we are to appreciate the interior picturesque park and garden could be significance of the Crystal Palace. observed from the outside.12 Paxton’s proposal represented an attempt to utilise glasshouses as a Paxton’s broader environmental aspirations means of reinstating a healthy human habitat The idea of utilising all-glass structures and within the environment of the emerging industrial mechanical environmental systems as a means to cities which, as numerous articles in the Civil Engineer achieve healthy environments, not only for tender and Architect’s Journal and the Builderillustrated, were plants but also for the population of the nineteenth- confronted with poor hygienic conditions, century industrial city, was the locus of Paxton’s overcrowding, lack of daylight, air and water broader socio-environmental aspirations. Paxton pollution.13 The prospect of providing the general illustrated his ideas in a series of hypothetical design population of large cities, which suffered among projects, pamphlets, newspaper articles and lectures. other ailments from tuberculosis, various skin In What is to be done with the Crystal Palace?, Paxton diseases and bronchitis,with daylight and fresh air proposed that all-glass structures equipped with
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