ARTS
Architecture
The Iron Revolution: Architects, Engineers and Structural Innovation 1780-1880 (RIBA Heinz Gallery, till 20 July)
Men of iron
Gavin Stamp
The Crystal Palace no longer exists,' lamented Le Corbusier after the terrible fire at Sydenham in 1936. 'What has disappeared with it was not a curiosity, but one of the great monuments of 19th- century architecture. That century had a strange destiny. It engendered the architecture of the modern world, exem- plifying it in immense and splendid struc- tures. This architecture was the fruit of discovery, of the joy of creation, and of enthusiasms . . . but . . . while the new world was being born the forces of reaction rose en masse. Academism invaded gov- ernment departments, the schools and institutions. Never had architecture sunk to such a low ebb. . . .'
This is a perfect expression of the great myth about the 19th century that the Modern Movement used to justify itself, that architects turned their backs on the achievements of engineers and simply failed to follow up the possibilities for the future posed by Paxton's prefabricated structure of iron and glass. This was a notion which informed so many of the historians of Victorian architecture Hitchcock, Pevsner, Furneaux Jordan. So arose that familiar telling contrast between `functional' King's Cross, with its façade expressing the pure forms of two parallel train sheds, and St Pancras next door, with its huge neo-Gothic front masking the great shed behind, a contradiction between architecture and engineering: 'c'est magni- fique, mais ce n'est pas la gare. . . .'
Never mind that there was a great deal of wood in the Crystal Palace and that a huge conservatory was impractical for almost every purpose except mounting international exhibitions; never mind that the ribs of the original train sheds at King's Cross were also of wood and that St Pancras in contrast achieved a magnificent integration between masonry and iron construction, with iron beams proudly and intelligently exposed; for myth is always easier and more attractive than complex and confused truth.
But what is really extraordinary is that those who cheerfully dismissed 19th- century architecture as backward seem not to have used their eyes. For there is not only Gilbert Scott's cleverly ornamented ironwork in the Midland Hotel but the great girders covering Waterhouse's Natu- ral History Museum and the astonishing central glazed court of the Oxford Museum, where iron columns with foliated iron capitals support ribs of Gothic profile. And, of course, there was the late lamented Coal Exchange in the City where iron and masonry, ornament and construc- tion, achieved complete happy fusion. In all these public buildings, the architects were clearly interested in structural in- novation and were proud of the iron construction that they combined so suc- cessfully with traditional masonry forms. This admirable exhibition, organised by historians of engineering, is long overdue, for it shows how closely architects worked with engineers during the first century of the Industrial Revolution. With such things as the Albert Dock in Liverpool, where warehouses are supported on cast-iron Doric columns, or that supremely beautiful masterpiece of iron and glass, the Palm House at Kew, this collaboration has long been recognised. But there was much, much more, as working drawings reveal. Buildings might seem to be of traditional construction, but there was a mass of iron holding them up. Nash could never have achieved the fantastic skyline of the Bright- on Pavilion without a network of iron stanchions; Smirke used huge iron girders for the King's Library in the British Museum, while at the Reform Club, Charles Barry carefully integrated every possible structural and technical innova- tion into his palazzo in Pall Mall.
Two questions are posed by this exhibi- tion. The first is, who had the upper hand, architects or engineers? This problem is discussed in several essays in the excellent catalogue edited by Robert Thorne, a small but significant publication which should be compulsory reading for narrowly aesthetic architectural historians. The other question concerns architecture to- day, for so-called High Tech architecture postulates the superiority of the engineer's approach and denies the necessity of masonry forms which Victorian architects — no fools — accepted on functional as much as aesthetic reasons. In other words, is Lloyd's better architecture in principle than, say, the new British Library at St Pancras? The real point is that Corb admired the Crystal Palace on purely aesthetic grounds: he liked pure, clean, unadorned structures but, as this exhibi-
The Coffee Room at George Gilbert Scott's Midland Grand Hotel
tion shows, iron (and steel) can achieve much richer effects in the hands of less doctrinaire and puritanical designers.
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