Do not bring the park up to the walls of a house: give the house a terrace, steps and a flower garden in formal lines between it and the park, because the house is a work of art and must be joined to the landscape by art.
Rules · Modules · Structure · Plans · Materials
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.
pane 49 × 10 in · ridge 8 ft · bay 24 ft · spans 24, 48, 72 ft · 1,848 × 408 ft
The Crystal Palace was designed from its smallest part upwards. Chance Brothers could make panes of sheet glass 49 inches long; set diagonally in the ridge-and-furrow roof, they gave ridges 8 feet apart; three ridges made a bay of 24 feet. The columns stood on that grid, and the girders came in lengths of 24, 48 and 72 feet to span one, two or three bays. The nave was 72 feet wide, the aisles stepped down on either side, and the whole was 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide. The transept, 72 feet wide and 108 feet high under a timber-ribbed vault, was added so that a row of elms on the site could stay inside.
Because the parts were few and identical, they could be made in factories while the foundations were laid, and assembled at great speed; and because the building was a kit, it could be taken down after the Exhibition closed in October 1851 and re-erected, enlarged, at Sydenham, where it opened in June 1854. There it stood, with a barrel-vaulted nave and three transepts, above Paxton’s terraces and fountains, until it burned down in November 1936.
Related rules
Plant each tree and shrub apart, with room to grow to its full natural form, so that it can be seen and admired as a specimen; prefer foreign kinds to native ones, so that the place is recognised at once as a garden, a work of art.
Raise tender plants in glasshouses through the winter and plant them out in early summer, massed in beds cut in the lawn or on a terrace, in blocks, ribbons or patterns of a few strong colours; lift them in autumn and replant for the next season.
Glaze a roof in a series of small ridges and valleys, the panes set at an angle on light sash bars, so that the low sun of morning and evening strikes the glass more squarely, the roof is stiffened by its folds, and the rain runs into gutters in the furrows.
Carry the city’s cross traffic through the park on roads sunk below its surface, out of sight; inside it, give carriages, riders and walkers each their own system of drives, rides and paths, crossing one another by bridges and arches so that none need meet.
Place perfectly hardy plants, foreign as well as native, in woods, meadows, banks and the edges of water where they will thrive and spread without further care, instead of renewing tender bedding every year.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Crystal Palace grid of 24 feet”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/crystal-palace-module. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.