The Modern Interior

Benjamin described them as ‘a city, a world in miniature’, emphasizing
their strong relationship with the ‘outside’. 8 He also saw them as the ‘forerunners
of department stores’. 9 Top lighting, which had also transformed
the Grande Galerie in the Louvre Museum, was widely used. 10 Gas lighting
was introduced into the arcades in the early nineteenth century. 11
The Parisian arcades, and others which appeared subsequently in
cities such as Brussels, Berlin, Naples and Milan, established a new
type of commercial interior space made possible by new materials and
building technologies. The combination of materials used proved to be
eminently transferable to other commercial spaces created at that time to
provide shoppers with a sense of freedom from the claustrophobia of
home and protection from the elements. In the first half of the nineteenth
century iron and glass had most frequently been employed in the
construction of greenhouses, which had required the maximum amount
of light to enter into them. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first
international exhibition, held in London in 1851, was mounted within a
giant greenhouse. The Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, held
in London’s Hyde Park, has been widely heralded as the first of the
modern exhibitions. Its interior spaces provided a third of the British
population with an opportunity for an encounter with modernity. Joseph
Paxton’s dramatic iron and glass building was modelled on the concept
of a greenhouse and, in sharp contrast to the middle-class domestic parlour
which sought to exclude the outside world, aimed to bring in as
much light as possible. The interior view of the ‘Crystal Palace’ (shown
overleaf) depicts the opening of the Great Exhibition with two heralds
awaiting the arrival of Queen Victoria. The trees that were left on site are
in full view. That same strategy was to be emulated later by the Swiss
modernist architect, Le Corbusier, in his Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau,
exhibited at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs
Modernes et Industriels (see illus. on p. 141). The transparency of the Hyde
Park building, created by the extensive use of glass, and the feeling of
openness made possible by the use of iron as a structural material, are
also visible. The building was little more than a shelter, albeit one executed
on a monumental scale. Visitors to its expansive inner space must
have felt that they were as near to being outside as it was possible to be,
short of actually being so. It was also an experience that allowed them to
become part of the modern world, which was increasingly characterized
by the dominance of the visual experience of goods to be consumed.
Objects could not be purchased at the exhibition, however, but simply 115