‘A copy – or rather a translation … with numerous sparkling emendations.’ Re-rebuilding the Pompeian Court of the Crystal Palace

Abstract

The cry ‘what to do with the Crystal Palace’ continues to reverberate long after the Palace’s fiery demise. Whilst local heritage groups continue to cherish it, its memory has been jeopardised by authorities, both bureaucratic (who have failed to implement a coherent conservation plan for the site) and academic (who have largely refused to engage with building or exhibition). The result, the mental dismantling of the Sydenham Palace from nineteenth-century histories, has been explained by scholarly aversion to reconstruction/inauthenticity and play/populist entertainment, the very aspects which defined it. This chapter explore a small part of the Palace, the Pompeian Court, through our own digital visualisation, housed in Second Life, a popular multi-user online virtual world. By choosing such a venue, we have favoured the pursuit not of absolute authenticity but of virtual presence, offering a space in which visitors to the model, through their avatars, might circulate the space, interact with each other and the exhibits.

Art and archaeology

“…10 German approaches to the disciplines of art history and architectural history have often diverged from those of Anglo-American academia, and this book is an American-German attempt to emphasize the potential of Bauforschung, the methodical analysis of buildings, by showcasing what it has to offer. A series of case studies cover four main thematic interests: 'construction processes, design principles, building traditions, and historical context' (12), which together allow us to see how the approach helps us to understand architecture both in its immediate archaeological context and in terms of its 'broader practical and symbolic significance' (11). The numerous chapters cover these different aspects across a wide period and, as is increasingly the case with many edited volumes, are pretty short, meaning that they are sometimes a little unsatisfying as stand-alone pieces.…”

“…Instead, the image reproduces the interior of the Pompeian Court, a Pompeian house built as part of the exhibits for the Sydenham Crystal Palace in South London in 1854. 11 Unwittingly, Zink has perfectly demonstrated the influence of successive layers of modelling on our vision of the ancient world.…”