Sutherland Open HouseFebruary, 2014

Body Building – The Human Cathedral

(Architecture from Romanesque to Gothic)

Kevin J. BenoySocial Studies Department

The Plan

• First we will look at a few Medieval architectural developments.

• Then we will demonstrate those principles using people as building blocks.

• In any remaining time we will look at images of a variety of churches.

From Darkness to Light

Autun CathedralRomanesque interiors were heavy and dark

Chartres CathedralGothic interiors were light

and airy.

Suger’s New Style

• At St. Denis (Paris), Bishop Suger wanted to bring “the light of God” into his Church.

• The engineering techniques were not new, but were never employed together to this effect before.

Suger’s New Style -Pointed Arches

• Gothic pointed arches directed weight downward in a more focused way – the result was that vertical supports could be spaced more widely apart than the old rounded arches allowed.

• Walls no longer need bear so much weight.

Romanesque (Norman) Arches at Gloucester

Gothic Arches at St. Denis

Suger’s New Style – Ribbed Vaults• Romanesque design

took the rounded arch, extending it through space to form a barrel vault where the weight was supported by thick walls.

• The Gothic style added a stone skeleton of ribbed vaults to focus overhead weight onto supporting piers. Walls that no longer bore loads could be filled with glass.

Ribbed vaults in the lower chapel, St. Chappelle, Paris.

Suger’s New style – Flying Buttresses

• Builders have long known that adding outside supports to a wall gave additional strength. Thick Romanesque walls were bolstered by frequent buttressing.

• The flying buttress allowed weight to be transferred to supports pushed outside the building.

Romanesque Buttresses, Autun

Flying Buttresses transferring Weight – Notre Dame, Paris

Suger’s New Style - Gothic

• Pointed Arches• Ribbed Vaults• Flying Buttresses• Together, these

features allowed for a new, light, airy, larger, open-plan space that awed medieval viewers and continues to awe people today.

Walls of glass – the upper chapel, St. Chappelle, Paris.

Gothic Architecture

• Romanesque buildings had been heavy and squat – and are often lost amid surrounding buildings

• Gothic buildings soared high over their towns and cities.

St. Lazare, Autun

Canterbury Cathedral

Demonstration

• Now it is time for body building.• Would volunteers please partner with people

their own height, arranging themselves from the tallest pair to the shortest pair.

• We will demonstrate, and you will experience, how different vaulting and buttressing revolutionized architecture in the Middle Ages.

St. Lazare - Autun

Notre Dame Cathedral, Laon

Notre Dame Cathedral, Senlis

Notre Dame Cathedral, Amiens

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres

St. Pierre Cathedral, Beauvais

Gloucester Cathedral

Salisbury Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral

Bath Abbey

Westminster Abbey

finis