Why Architects Are Competing to Reconstruct a Building From 1851

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In London this year, six well-known architects will jockey for a chance to build a large public building. Sounds pretty unremarkable, right? Except that the structure was already designed and finishedmore than 150 years ago. Now, a Chinese property developer is holding a design competition to recreate it.

The building in question is the Crystal Palacethe elegant but hulking structure that was designed to house the 1851 Great Exhibition. It's been remade in different iterations several timesonce in England, once in New York, and once even in Dallas. But now, the palace is coming home to London. The Chinese developer behind the plan, Zhongrong Group, is putting up more than $800 million to rebuild the structure on its original site.

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This week, it announced a shortlist of six architects who will submit designs to do it. The list includes Zaha Hadid and Anish Kapoor, Nicholas Grimshaw, David Chipperfield, Marks Barfield, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, and Hawthorn Tompkinsnames responsible for some of London's most notable new structures, like the Millennium Dome, the Olympic Aquatic Center, and the Royal Court Theatre.

So, why even bother? Well, to architects and historians, the Crystal Palace is big deal. A really big deal. It was the building that, in some ways, foreshadowed modern architecture. It looks ornate and decorative, but this was a structure based on cold, calculated functionality. The whole thing was organized around the largest pane of glass available at that timeitself nothing short of a technological wonderwhich defined the proportions and layout of the building.

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The steel framework that held these glass panes was modular and prefabricatedwords pretty much unknown in 1853. Each module arrived at the site of the palace pre-made, and only needed to be screwed into place. The whole thing was built in record time, and became the largest prefab structure ever built. It was a blueprint for the next 150 years of architecturea super-light, super-cheap steel skeleton built to house the latest technological marvels of the day.

You know the morbid phenomenon in which an artist or musician's premature death bolsters the public's appreciation of their work? It's true for architecture, too. After the original Crystal Palace was relocated in 1854, it burned down in 1926and the memorializing began.

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Why Architects Are Competing to Reconstruct a Building From 1851