Transparent Solutions 
by J. Max Bond, Jr. 
The Glass House, by John Hix. The 
MIT Press, $9.95 ( paperback J; 208 pp.. 
Ulus. 
During the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries, as the needs of plants came to 
be better understood, systems for heat- 
ing and ventilating structures used for 
growing plants evolved rapidly. Con- 
comitantly, plant houses, derived from 
the “wintering sheds” equipped with 
braziers to provide a little extra heat for 
plants grown inside in winter, gradually 
became more transparent. In the nine- 
teenth century, in particular, the skills 
required to make glass enclosures devel- 
oped enormously, to the point that by 
mid-century the technical skill existed 
to create such masterpieces as Joseph 
Paxton’s London Crystal Palace (1851), 
Richard Turner’s Palm House at Kew 
(1845-48), and the Crystal Art Palace 
in Queen’s Park, Glasgow (1873). By 
1889, the huge Galerie des Machines, 
built for the second Paris Universal Ex- 
hibition, had been completed. 
Their very names suggest the aura 
that surrounded these tremendously 
popular structures. The London Crystal 
Palace was huge, yet it was executed in 
less than a year — a feat, notes author 
John Hix in The Glass House, of “mass- 
production, prefabrication, standardiza- 
tion, modular construction, systems-in- 
tegration . . . and ingenuity.” 
Hix strongly believes that the great 
technical achievements of the nine- 
teenth-century building industry, which 
fostered creativity and original solutions 
to new building problems, can be repli- 
cated in our own time, and beyond, in 
addressing such problems as the recla- 
mation of arid lands, feeding the world’s 
poor, and the energy crisis. Thus, each 
of the two sections of his book ends with 
a scheme for the future. The first sec- 
tion, generally about the control of inter- 
nal climate's, concludes with a descrip- 
tion of an integrated desert plant house 
that, while growing vegetables, pro- 
duces fresh water from salt water. The 
second section ends with illustrations of 
a covered arctic city — a finale that re- 
veals quite a bit about the author’s pur- 
118 
poses and orientation. For despite his 
obvious appreciation of the beauty of 
the great glass conservatories, which are 
amply documented here, Hix’s primary 
concerns are with utility and the solving 
of problems. 
The Glass House focuses on a par- 
ticular type of glass building: not the 
church, not the commercial galleria, not 
the alienating glass tower, but instead 
the useful (for growing plants), delight- 
ful (on a dreary winter day), popular 
conservatory or exhibition hall favored 
by the nineteenth-century positivist 
Western society. The structures fea- 
tured in the book resulted from in- 
creased world trade and the Industrial 
Revolution. They were created at a time 
when, as Hix says in his introduction, 
European society was concerned with 
“man’s growing ability to use the forces 
of nature.” It was a time, too, when 
technology was still mechanical, visible, 
and tactile. 
The book’s themes are developed 
through both the text and the extensive 
and fascinating illustrations. One prob- 
lem with this arrangement, however, is 
that the text and illustrations often com- 
pete for the reader’s attention. Still, to 
some degree, they work together sugges- 
tively in that the text is all technology 
and logic while the buildings shown are 
often quite sensual in form. At one 
point, the author tells us that in design- 
ing the Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton 
developed a floor-cleaning machine that 
turned out to be unnecessary because 
the long skirts worn by Victorian ladies 
swept the floors. As a counterpoint, the 
pictures convey an image of “properly” 
dressed and mannered people promen- 
ading through an Eden of lush and ex- 
otic vegetation. 
While the material presented in The 
Glass House is fascinating, the style of 
its presentation is less than vivid. This 
seems to stem not only from the conflict 
between the text and illustrations but 
also from the organization. The treat- 
ment is not chronological: one part of 
the book deals with environmental-con- 
Fern House at Ashridge, by Matthew Digby Wyatt 
