The Crystal Palace - a model
"The Crystal Palace was the first really modern building in terms of materials and the way it was manufactured. Without it the V&A wouldn't exist; it was the ticket sales of the Great Exhibition in 1851 that paid for it. Joseph Paxton, who designed the Palace, is a hero of mine; he pioneered an innovative building, the implications of which still ripple through architecture. I also admire his genius for finding a way to make it happen. When my studio designed the UK pavilion for the Shanghai Expo' in 2010, we created the Seed Cathedral, a hairy building filled with 250,000 seeds; it attracted more than eight million visitors, and that's a similar example of a design led strategically as well as artistically."
Jason Alden
