Jigsaw puzzle by Nina Torr
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Dreaming of Crystal Houses Dreaming of Crystal Houses
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J. McNeven, William Simpson, Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, 1851. Victoria & Albert Museum in London
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Dreaming of Crystal Houses

The Great Victorian Exhibition Space
Zygmunt Borawski
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time 10 minutes
Zygmunt Borawski:
used to be an editor of the Architecture & Design section. A blueprint poet.

“This can’t be designed in two weeks,” they said. “A self-taught man with no technical education cannot come up with a stable framework,” they grumbled. We don’t know who bought Joseph Paxton a beer, but every Brit knows what the Crystal Palace was.

The 19th century was the age of revolution, Napoleon, industrialization and international exhibitions. The first one took place in London’s Hyde Park in 1851, on the initiative of Prince Albert, privately the husband of Queen Victoria, up until recently the longest reigning British monarch. During her rule, Britain developed into the world empire that was getting rich quickly; thanks to the new markets and due to the galloping industrial revolution, its workshops and factories were releasing new products at full speed. They were presented to a wider audience at national exhibitions, of which the most splendid one took place in the turbulent but still imperial France. And since this situation bothered the British (not for the first time in history), they decided to show the French that it was their products and exhibitions that were the best in the world. That’s how the decision to organize the first world exhibition in London was taken. The Royal Commission was formed, which was to organize it and fundraise for it. It was led by Prince Albert.

Difficult beginnings

At the beginning

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Zygmunt Borawski:
used to be an editor of the Architecture & Design section. A blueprint poet.
Translation: Anna Błasiak
Publish date: 20.03.2020

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Illustration from Bruno Munari’s book “Nella nebbia di Milano”, 1968. Photo from private collection, Brescia, Italy
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We present artistic books on the pages of our print magazine, and the fact that we do is thanks to, among others, one Italian artist. He is loved both by children and by such intellectual masters as Umberto Eco.

“Never seen so much snow,” is how the Italian artist Bruno Munari starts the story of the Little White Riding Hood. On subsequent pages, we follow the story of the little girl dressed all in white, who is wading through snow drifts to get to her grandma, whom she hasn’t seen for a long time. Because of the blizzard, you can’t see a thing. The pages are white and the story unfolds, naturally, in our imagination. In his other book, The Circus in the Mist, the city of Milan is enveloped in a milky fog. On the pages, made of semi-opaque tracing paper, there are silhouettes of vehicles, street lamps and pedestrians hurrying in different directions. Ploughing page by page through the misty city, we finally arrive at the circus tent. We enter, and that’s when the book explodes with colours.

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