Function and Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century

Paul Dobraszczyk, Peter Sealy, Paul Dobraszczyk, Peter Sealy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317131403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Criticism

The introduction of iron – and later steel – construction and decoration transformed architecture in the nineteenth century. While the structural employment of iron has been a frequent subject of study, this book re-directs scholarly scrutiny on its place in the aesthetics of architecture in the long nineteenth century. Together, its eleven unique and original chapters chart – for the first time – the global reach of iron's architectural reception, from the first debates on how iron could be incorporated into architecture's traditional aesthetics to the modernist cleaving of its structural and ornamental roles.

The book is divided into three sections. Formations considers the rising tension between the desire to translate traditional architectural motifs into iron and the nascent feeling that iron buildings were themselves creating an entirely new field of aesthetic expression. Exchanges charts the commercial and cultural interactions that took place between British iron foundries and clients in far-flung locations such as Argentina, Jamaica, Nigeria and Australia. Expressing colonial control as well as local agency, iron buildings struck a balance between pre-fabricated functionalism and a desire to convey beauty, value and often exoticism through ornament. Transformations looks at the place of the aesthetics of iron architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which iron ornament sought to harmonize wide social ambitions while offering the tantalizing possibility that iron architecture as a whole could transform the fundamental meanings of ornament.

Taken together, these chapters call for a re-evaluation of modernism's supposedly rationalist interest in nineteenth-century iron structures, one that has potentially radical implications for the recent ornamental turn in contemporary architecture.

Part 1

Formations

1

London’s Crystal Palace and Its Decorative Iron Construction

John W. Stamper

The Crystal Palace, built by Joseph Paxton (1803–65) for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, was arguably the most significant building of the mid-nineteenth century in terms of technological advances and aesthetic innovation (Figure 1.1). It was the largest public building of its time to be built principally of iron and glass rather than traditional masonry construction, or a combination thereof. Historian George Chadwick called it a highly successful essay in modular construction: mass-produced, with standardized, pre-fabricated components capable of rapid and economical assembly.¹ Sigfried Giedion argued that the Crystal Palace made the first use on a grand scale of prefabricated parts, and it arrived at a new artistic expression through the use of the new material of plate glass.² Nikolaus Pevsner stated that, based on its size and the ingenious use of prefabricated construction, it was the outstanding example of mid-nineteenth-century iron-and-glass architecture.³ In these purely technical terms, there is no denying the Crystal Palace’s important place in history.

For many years after its construction, and even after it was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham, there were many architects and critics who questioned whether the Crystal Palace was a work of architecture. Did it possess sufficient ornament and durability for it to take its place beside contemporary monuments such as the Palace of Westminster (1840–70) or the St Pancras station and Midland Grand hotel (1865–74)? While such debates have receded, the larger question that concerns us today is: what role did the Crystal Palace play in the development of decorated iron architecture in the nineteenth century?

This chapter will argue that not only was the Crystal Palace a significant work of architecture, but also it played a crucial role in establishing a revolutionary architectural aesthetic that was based on new building materials and on a new concept of spatial experience. While it had little in the way of applied decoration, there were several aspects of its structure and materials that created vivid effects of ornamentation. For instance, its structural components were not just linear iron bars or tubes; rather, they reflected, in an abstract way, traditional Renaissance and Gothic details through the use of moulded column capitals and bases. In addition, the exterior window bays were composed of arches and pendants, while, inside, the use of open lattice-work trusses supporting the balconies and roofs was both structural and decorative. Above all, the vast interior space had a transformative appearance, achieved through the lightness and polychromatic effect of its structural members and the transparency and reflectivity of its glass walls and roofs.

1.1 Crystal Palace, London, view of south entrance, as shown in the Illustrated London News, 1851.

THE CRITICAL REACTION

When the Crystal Palace was completed, it was a shock to a number of architects and critics in Victorian England who considered it more a work of engineering, rather than an enduring work of architecture. Thus the architectural historian James Fergusson (1808–86) wrote in 1862 in his History of the Modern Styles of Architecture:

Though an admirable piece of Civil Engineering, [the Crystal Palace] had no claim to be considered as an architectural design. Use, and use only, pervaded every arrangement, and it was not ornamented to such an extent as to elevate it into the class of Fine Arts.⁴

Earlier, an anonymous writer in the Builder called the Crystal Palace not “architecture but a packing case – not the most excellent structure we could contrive ... but the easiest to fulfill certain conditions – most easily calculated – and capable of answering its material ends with the least expenditure of thought.”⁵ To these critics, the Crystal Palace lacked both ornament and durability, two essential characteristics of good architecture.⁶

The outspoken nineteenth-century architectural critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) called it “a greenhouse larger than a greenhouse was ever built before,” and the final proof that higher beauty was “eternally impossible in iron.”⁷ Ruskin argued in 1859 that Paxton did not work directly within an existing style; rather, he created a new one that Ruskin found abhorrent. Ruskin preferred architects who designed within the parameters of a traditional style – that is, who worked in the manner of their forefathers. For Ruskin, the principal means of invention was only through the manipulation of lines, mouldings and masses, not through changes of material, proportion or scale.⁸

Ruskin also found mass-produced, machine-made metal work to be dishonest, calling it “Operative Deceit.”⁹ He argued in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) that all cast and machine work in place of fine, handcrafted work was bad and dishonest, and he argued for its absolute and unconditional rejection.¹⁰ Ruskin discussed ornament in terms of the abstract beauty of its forms, the sense of human labour and care spent upon it, and the resulting richness, delicacy, and delightfulness that true ornamentation brought to a building.¹¹ He saw the use of cast metals in architecture essentially as a falsehood – that is, a subtle but contemptible violation of truth, because it represented a direct falsity of assertion in respect to the nature of material or the quantity of labour expended in its execution.¹²

In a similar manner, the Gothic Revival architect Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–52) condemned the Crystal Palace, calling it a “Crystal Humbug” and a “Glass Monster,” “a bad vile construction,” and the “most monstrous thing ever imagined.”¹³ Pugin objected to the building because of what he perceived as the stultifying monotony of its mass-produced units: in his earlier publication, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), Pugin argued that “cast iron is a source of continual repetition, subversive of the variety and imagination exhibited in pointed [Gothic] design.”¹⁴

In the wider culture of building in the mid-nineteenth century, Fergusson, Ruskin, and Pugin were in harmony with the majority of architects, engineers, and the public alike. Throughout the nineteenth century, the general belief was that buildings should be ornamented. Appropriate levels of decoration marked a building’s aesthetic value and its hierarchy within an urban context – that is, whether it had a civic, educational, commercial, or residential function.¹⁵ In this context, historical ornament was generally seen as a marker that differentiated mere building (anonymous or vernacular construction) and architecture as a form of aesthetic expression. Ornamentation came in many forms, from the classical orders to representations of natural or artificial objects. It could function at an allegorical level, or it could convey a message or ideology through either pictorial imagery or inscriptions. As argued by Antoine Picon, the architectural discipline could almost be defined as the art of adorning an otherwise unexpressive building fabric.¹⁶ Critics of the Crystal Palace argued that the building lacked any decoration that was important for expressing its meaning, that it failed to teach and inspire, and that it had no basis in the principles of nature.¹⁷

While the change in materials, scale, and proportion represented by the Crystal Palace was seen by many critics as a challenge to the vaunted artistic autonomy of architecture and to the very survival of its art, the architectural historian Harry Mallgrave has argued that the response of architects was not to seek the overthrow of the historical representational systems upon which the profession’s artistic education and practice had for centuries been based; rather, it was to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Architecture Unbound
• Part 1 Formations
• Part 2 Exchanges
• Part 3 Transformations
• Bibliography
• Index