BA3 - Architectural Research Extended - Gothic

The architectural style I choose to extend my research on is Gothic style. I choose this style because I am very interested in Cathedrals and how they are built, and most are built with this iconic style. To begin this extended research I looked up several sources including books, documentaries, internet etc so this will be quiet a in depth and long blogpost about this very decorative style.

Extended Research - Gothic Architecture

The transformation from Romanesque to Gothic began 1144 AD during the construction of 'Church of Saint Denis'. As an advisor for two French kings and a Monk, 'Abbot Suger' was the architect and visionary behind this church. He wanted to change the Romanesque style that had been used for years , with it's thick walls and small windows, Abbot Suger came up with an Architectural style that allowed the creation of thin walls and massive windows. He did this by introducing pointed Archways and Buttresser, which I will explain more about later in this blogpost. Abbot Suger called his new Architectural style for 'Modern'. Critics against this new style started calling it by the same name of a infamous barbaric tribe 'Goths'. The name stuck and that is why it is now called 'Gothic'.

Church of Saint Denis in Paris, France

Abbot Suger saw light as a symbol for God, therefore he wanted to introduce massive stain glass windows to the churches. This meant more light which would bring people closer to god. However, by the help of massive support arches the windows also worked as walls for the cathedrals. Because most people in the medieval times were illiterate they decorated those massive windows with stories from the bible as pictures.

An example of how stain glass windows also works as walls

What allows the cathedrals of this time to achieve such great heights is because they learnt to master a pressure called the 'Stress-line'. This is the pressure that prevents archways from collapsing. The way it works is that it sends pressure from the key stone which is the stone located in the centre of a Arch, and evenly distributes the pressure to the ground. However, when building taller arches this made them collapse because the stress-line was pointing sideways. Because of this Abbot Suger invented the pointed archway. This allowed the construction of tall archways with the stress-line pointing downwards.

An image describing the difference between the two kind of Archways.

Another invention by Abbot Suger was the addition of 'Flying Buttresses'. Their job is to by the help of an external structure help leading the gravity of the massive arches inside the cathedral towards the ground, and also evenly distribute the weight of the entire cathedral. Since building those arches was like building a house of cards, one error and the whole cathedral would collapse. There had to be an extra addition to secure the structure from collapsing. A common reason to why some cathedrals has collapsed is because of a miss placed buttress, which have distributed the gravity incorrectly and there for made the entire cathedral to collapse.

An image describing the function of the buttress and how it effects the Stress-Line to change

(Click to Enlarge)

An image showing the distribution of gravity in a cathedral.

Since the purpose of building these great cathedrals was spiritual and to bring people closer to god, many of the great cathedrals were built in the shape of a crucifix. It is believed that some of the medieval architects used measurements from the bible as a blueprint while building the cathedrals. Many of the cathedrals height measures to be 144 cubic metres high which is the height of solomon's temple and a number that is repeated several times in the bible.

 This image shows how the crucifix is built in most cathedrals

This image shows two different cathedrals where both reaches 144 cubic metres.

Around 1180 AD England wanted to break their ties with the French architects and there for developed their own Gothic style, which today is known as "Perpendicular Gothic". While the French Gothic style focuses a lot on decorative sculpting, Perpendicular focused on being clean and having a lot of vertical lines that would drag the attention of the viewer upwards towards god. This new style became England's first national style of architecture.

Pependicular Gothic, as you can see it is very clean and vertical.

References: 

Documentaries: 

Nova - Building The Great Cathedrals

BBC - Architects of the Divine, The First Gothic Age

E-Book:

The splendour of English Gothic Architecture - Written by: John Shannon Hendrix

Websites:

http://www.athenapub.com/14gothic-architecture.htm

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/latin-western-europe/gothic1/a/gothic-architecture-an-introduction