Ridge and furrow and wardian case: or the dream of a scale-indifferent glass box

Abstract

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the greenhouse was one of the most significant incubators in Western architectural culture: in the greenhouse, experimentations with widespread consequences have been carried out in such different fields as the development of new building materials, the sunlight exploitation, or the use of central heating. The question of scale in architecture has been radically reconsidered as well. This paper aims to analyse two antithetical cases in conceiving scale: John Claudius Loudon, who advocated modularity – implicit in the «ridge and furrow» constructive system – as a privileged tool for handling projects of any size, and Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, the creator of the «wardian case», which proved to be a fundamental tool for plant shipping, but also seemed to hint at the evocative but deceptive possibility of an artifact identical at every scale.