Crystal Palace, London, UK

Abstract

Sir Joseph Paxton (1803–1865), a self-made botanist, designer, and engineer of greenhouses was the principal designer of the Crystal Palace, the structure inside of which the Great Exhibition of 1851, a world’s fair of technology and production of the times, was held. At the time, this was the largest international exhibition held anywhere. It marked the culmination of an extraordinary confluence of forces emanating from international commerce, technology, architecture, and politics. Its impact on the engineering of buildings, not to mention the architectural world is, surprisingly, remarkable. This design was obtained at the last minute, at a time when all options were practically exhausted. While a design competition, which yielded more than 230 entries, was held in advance, the jury decided to use none of these designs, including that of the winner. As the jury, in a desperate move, was contemplating to assemble a hybrid design from the outstanding features of some of the competition entries, Mr. Paxton was given a chance to submit a design for the building, whose innovative features demonstrated their value until the structure burned down in 1936 as the assumption that glass and iron would be fire proof would not hold true.

Exercise 14

Use one or more of the tables included in the Appendix section to conduct a partial DAV analysis of the case study provided in this chapter. Did the value adding features contribute to cost, schedule, or quality of the product positively or negatively? What could or should have been done to realize the full benefit of the value added by the special features of this design?

Table A.1: Building facts

Table A.2: Stakeholders

Table A.3: Design features

Table A.4: Timeline

Table A.5: Estimated ordinal values for stakeholder benefits

Table A.6: Estimated NPV for feature; Energy Savings

Table A.7: Estimated NPV for feature; Structural System

Table A.8: Calculation of net present value of a double-skin Facade

Table A.9: AHP ranking matrix technique applied to similar buildings

Table A.10: Benchmarking of N-number of comparable buildings

The information provided about this case is at best limited. Feel free to collect additional information to undertake a complete analysis and make necessary assumptions. Some resources to help you get started include the following:

• Hobhouse C (1950) 1851 and the Crystal Palace. John Murray, Albemarle Street: London.

• McKean J (1994) Crystal Palace: Joseph Paxton & Charles Fox. Phaidon Press: London.

• Chadwick GF (1961) Works of Sir Joseph Paxton. Architectural Press.