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ANTOINE PICON: My name is Antoine Picon.
I'm the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture
and Technology at Harvard's Graduate School of Design,
where I teach classes in the history of architecture, urbanism, and technology.
Few buildings have marked as important a moment in the history of architecture
as the Crystal Palace.
Not only was the building emblematic of a new way to build,
using iron at a scale unprecedented, it was also a major turning point
in terms of its use since it hosted the first world fair
and introduced a whole new spatial experience.
The revolutionary nature of the building was immediately
felt by the contemporaries.
Not only was the building immense, but it introduced the public
to the new realm of merchandise, to this capitalist world full of wonders.
As some critics of the time wrote, the building
"seemed as large as the entire planet."
This class is about the changes brought by the first Industrial Revolution
to architecture, both to the production of buildings and to their use.
As we will see, the Crystal Palace is, indeed,
emblematic of major changes in construction with the adoption of iron,
as well as in the perception of architecture.
To understand the scope of the changes brought by the Crystal Palace,
it's necessary to say a few words on the progress of iron construction.
Of course, iron had been known for thousands of years,
but its use at a massive scale in construction
really started at the end of the 18th century.
In 1779, was, for instance, constructed the first bridge entirely
in cast iron in Coalbrookdale in England.
Later, iron would develop both in very utilitarian construction
like bridges, but also in more pleasurable venues,
such as greenhouses.
As we will see, greenhouses have an intimate link
with the conception of the Crystal Palace.
Here we have the interior of Kew Garden greenhouse by Richard Turner.
Today we find the use of iron totally normal in construction.
We tend to forget, by the same token, that this was not
the case prior to the 18th century.
Iron was used mainly for machines, for guns, for cannons, but certainly
not in the very large quantities required by iron construction.
The modern story of iron in buildings and infrastructure
really begins during the second half of the 18th century.
The Crystal Palace was built to host the first Great
Exhibition that opened in 1851.
The Great Exhibition was unique because it was
the first worldwide show of that size.
But it was actually rooted in a longer tradition that
really started in the 18th century with a greater and greater interest taken
in technology by all European elites.
The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert
was typical of these interests for technology in general,
with its very minute description of fabrication,
like here, for example, pin making in an 18th-century factory.
This interest led the European elites to try
to organize exhibitions showcasing the industrial production
of their respective countries.
The ambition to showcase the products of national industry
was especially pronounced in France.
In 1798, the first exhibition was organized in Paris
and, later on, exhibitions of that type were regularly
organized in the French capital.
The last one of these exhibitions, the one preceding immediately
the Great Exhibition of 1851, was a pretty massive endeavor
hosted in a large temporary construction near the Invalides right
in the middle of Paris.
At the time, the term "industry" actually
did not cover only manufacturing, but also all the human activities related
to technology.
Also noticeable was the presence of agricultural products.
In 1849, for example, cattle was displayed along with machines.
So this related really to the 18th century sense of industry
as everything linked to the productive activities of man and not
only manufacture, as we know it today.
As we will see, this extended meaning will characterize still
the Great 1851 Exhibition.