Origins
Significance of Grand Panoramas (2)
Since panoramas were shown throughout the western world, including America, finding standardised sizes and facilities was an obvious concern. International panorama companies were major contributing factors, seeking as they did to reach large sections of the population, mainly for speculative reasons, and travelling around with their panoramic paintings; clearly they were interested in standard solutions.
Panoramas with a length of 100 m and a height of 10 m required rotundas with an exhibition space of at least 32 m in diameter and a height of 10 m. They had to be equipped with a roof with a glass strip to provide lighting from above, a visitors’ platform at the level of the painting’s horizon line, and a «velum» above the platform. The velum was a large fabric screen which protected visitors from the direct light from the roof space.
Both the plans for the Geneva panorama of 1880 (published in Moniteurs des architectes in 1883) and the panorama on Zurich’s Utoquai (1893, recomposed by Heinz Schwarz in 1996) complied with this standard.
