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CLIL
9
ENGINEERING
The Crystal Palace
Joseph Paxton, 1851
Looking at the pictures
One of the best known engineering
structures of the 19th century was the
Crystal Palace designed by
Joseph Paxton
(1801-65) in 1851 to house the
Great
International exhibition of london
in Hyde
Park (
➤
p.
4
) and to display products of
Britain and the Empire. Paxton was the
typical self-made man, uneducated and
uncultured but endowed with a brilliantly
inventive mind. By observing the structure
of a leaf, he developed a greenhouse
design using standard iron and glass
elements. The design of the Crystal Palace
evolved from this, but on a vast scale. It
took only six months to make and erect the
components and it was the wonder of the
age. Internally a seemingly never-ending,
barely-enclosed space in which goods
were displayed among the trees, it was a
fitting symbol of the unlimited possibilities
for British Imperialism.
The pictures in context
Architecture, more than the other arts,
suffered from the Industrial Revolution:
with craftsmanship being supplanted by
mechanical production, the technical
ability of the stone-cutter and mason was
more and more difficult to find. Towards the
second half of the 19th century, however,
engineers began to replace architects
as inventors of imaginative structures.
Using mass-produced iron (and later,
steel) components, they designed new
structures, undreamed of before, to house
the industrialists’ machines, railway stations,
docks, factories, bridges, exhibition halls
and museums.
R
eading
the
pictuReS
1
How was the Crystal Palace built
and what did it come to represent
in the eye of Britain and the world?
S
iSteR
a
RtS
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