In the following article, José Javier Alayón González, PhD, Architect, and full-time assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, shares his perspective on exhibition venues and how they adapt to changing circumstances.
In the mid-nineteenth century, industrialized societies created a new mode of commercialization. Under a single, immense roof—which, in architectural terms, often represented structural milestones—the most diverse array of products was displayed to a bustling crowd of people. This new exhibition-fair typology was the result of a highly productive alignment with engineering: longer structural spans, greater heights, more transparency, prefabrication, and speed.
Inside a fully transparent building, the pioneering Crystal Palace by engineer and gardener Joseph Paxton, the British government began testing new forms of education and surveillance in 1851 within an increasingly urban society. The densification of cities called for social norms that regulated everything from alcohol consumption to public dress codes. Little has changed since the Victorian era. Fifty years later, at the entrance to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a sign warned: “Please remember when you get inside the gates you are part of the show.”
