The Crystal Palace
Paxton’s building for the Great Exhibition, Hyde Park, 1851: 1,848 ft by 408 ft, cast-iron columns and girders on a 24 ft grid, three tiers stepping back under ridge-and-furrow glass roofs, and a transept with a barrel-vaulted roof 72 ft wide, built over the elms. Rebuilt larger at Sydenham in 1854 with the nave vaulted too, three transepts, terraces and fountains in front and two water towers by Brunel.
The rules it illustrates
The Crystal Palace grid of 24 feet. Build on a single grid of 24 feet, set by the 8-foot spacing of the roof ridges and the size of the largest pane of glass, so that every column, girder, sash bar and pane is one of a few standard parts that can be made by machine, delivered and bolted together in any number.
Use iron as iron. A new material calls for new forms: iron should be used in slender members that show its strength in tension and bending, not cast in imitation of stone columns and vaults.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles Victorian garden.
In the chapters Frame and Skin, Gardens and Landscape.