A tender was issued for the Crystal Palace for the 1851 World Exhibition in London, where construction speed and price were more important than durability. The greenhouse builder Joseph Paxton and his company Fox & Henderson were commissioned. The prefabricated components were assembled on site: columns in cast iron (yellow), girders in wrought iron (blue), and trusses in laminated wood (red). The Crystal Palace would not meet today’s requirements concerning thermal expansion and wind resistance. It measured 564 m (1851 feet) by 124 m and was completely transparent, before it was crammed with products of applied art, fine art, and industry from all over the world. L’esthétique des ingénieurs, which took absolutely no account of the neo-styles used by the architects, was therefore decades ahead of the development of architecture.
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