Day-Tripping: Urban Excursions and the Architecture of International Exhibitions

Abstract

This article examines how the architecture of international exhibitions stimulated sensations of moving through space and time. It conducts a detailed study of the principal structures of the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, the first in a series of highly successful events mounted in the so-called “second city of the empire.” Through analysing pictorial representations and textual descriptions, it reconstructs the exhibition’s physical environment and atmosphere, which were perceived as “oriental” in character by contemporary commentators, in order to probe how the architecture of international exhibitions helped render these events sites of imperial meaning-making. Following an interdisciplinary approach informed by architectural and design history, postcolonial analyses of the relationship between nation and empire, and critical museology, it frames the international exhibition as a ritual site and argues that exhibition architecture played a key role in producing a liminal experience for visitors.