Crystal Gazing
Thursday, October 3, 2013
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The good news today is that the Crystal Palace may be built again on Sydenham Hill in South London. Almost the only thing left of the original is a pair of stone sphinxes that once crouched inscrutably next to one of the entrance staircases. The rest of it burnt down in 1936, the inflagration watched by my girlfriend's mother looking out of a bathroom window in Peckham. I remember asking her if she had to stand on the toilet seat and she gave me a funny look and said "Probably." Although smaller in plan, the building had as its core the original Great Exhibition building built in 1851 by Joseph Paxton, erected in Hyde Park and visited between May and October of that year by over five million people.
But what will the new one look like? Some bloke on the wireless this lunchtime said he expected there'd be some glass and iron in it somewhere, as if acres of glass wasn't a prerequisite. Ten years ago I remember seeing a design by Chris Wilkinson of Wilkinson Eyre at an RA Summer Show, and it would certainly suit me. A real new Crystal Palace for our own age, something we should've insisted on for the Millennium instead of that bloody awful tent in Greenwich stuffed full of tat. I couldn't find a decent photograph of the Wilkinson proposal to show you, but here's another BBC report from 2003 with a murky image attached. The brilliant thing about this Dan Dare spaceship is that it doesn't take up any parkland space, being mostly suspended in thin air as it were. Dust off those plans Chris please.
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