© Hugh Pearman. First published in The Sunday Times, February 29, 2004, as "So good they built it twice".
The Crystal Palace comes close, very close, to being the single most influential piece of architecture ever built in Britain. I think we must concede that Inigo Jones's Banqueting House in Whitehall of 1622, introducing Renaissance classicism to the nation, had a greater impact over time. But in the modern world, the Crystal Palace beats everything else. 1851, when it was first built, was Year Zero for what eventually came to be known as high-tech. Look at buildings such as Richard Rogers' Lloyd's of London HQ, and there the Crystal Palace lives on. But the most astonishing thing about it was that they had to go and build it twice.
An excellent exhibition, "Crystal Palace at Sydenham" is now running at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London. Sir John Soane's masterly little gallery of 1814 marks another significant turning-point in architecture, so you are in for a double treat. There is something slightly odd about having such as huge sprawling thing as the Crystal Palace squeezed, so to speak, into a jewel-box, but this scale thing is just one of the enduring mysteries of architecture. Dulwich may be small, but has given over an entire enfilade of rooms to the show, and I'm surprised that it has received so little recognition for its chutzpah in doing so. This could well turn out to be the architectural exhibition of the year.
