Romantic and picturesque was the order of the day in the 19th century, often preferring to draw on the architecture and ornamentation of centuries past, even when using a modern material like cast iron.
Green landscaped garden for passing pleasant hours.
When Friedrich Weinbrenner began designing the new botanical gardens in 1806, work was already underway redesigning the remaining palace gardens, in the style of English landscape gardens. Unlike the Baroque style, this kind of park was supposed to have a "natural" effect and be pleasing to the eye the way a landscape painting would be, with individual scenic attractions, for example, small buildings or waterfalls.
Nature and architecture form a picturesque artistic synthesis.
Heinrich Hübsch was still applying this romantic tradition in the 1850s. In redesigning the botanical gardens, he wanted to unite nature and architecture in a picturesque setting. After 1863, the year Hübsch died, the wooden conservatory structures were replaced by cast iron, as had been used in English conservatories since the mid 19th century.
Female figures made of modern cast iron.
The cast iron style used in the winter garden, of which only the skeleton remains today, references the structure and ornamentation of a Greek temple, despite the modern material used. And not just the ornamentation is of classical origin. The caryatids–female figures who appear to carry the roof on their heads–were used as early as Greek antiquity. Cast-iron columns and decorative elements can also be found in abundance at smaller train stations of the period and have been preserved at several locations around Karlsruhe.
