Introduction to society and culture of 1150 – 1350 AD in Europe

Gothic Architecture

History of Architecture III

Architect D. Benedict Suresh
 Introduction

Factors Influencing
Gothic Architecture

Characteristic Features of
Gothic Architecture

French Gothic –
Architectural Characteristics

Evolution of Vaulting and

Development of Structural System

Typical Example –
Notre Dame, Paris
Introduction
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late
medieval period.

It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance

architecture.

Originating in 12th century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic
architecture was known during the period as "the French Style," with the term Gothic
first appearing during the latter part of the Renaissance.

Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great

cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe.

It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities
and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.

It is in the great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the
Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to
appeal to the emotions.

A great number of ecclesiastical buildings remain from this period, of which even the
smallest are often structures of architectural distinction while many of the larger
churches are considered priceless works of art.

Gothic Architecture
Introduction
For this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches.

A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and
continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, into the 20th century.

Factors Influencing Gothic Architecture

Geographical Condition:
The people of western Europe who were under the Roman Empire formed into separate nations, by the end
of 12th century.

Italy, Germany France, Spain became independent kingdoms.

England came under Norman Kings who possessed large territories in France whereas Russia and Norway
were less affected.

Geological Condition:
The style was characterized by the availability of building materials. Thus in Italy white and coloured marble
that in England.

Coarse grained stone in France and in N.Germany bricks determined the character of the architecture of
those countries.

In France, limestone was readily available in several grades, the very fine white limestone of Caen being
favoured for sculptural decoration

Gothic Architecture
Factors Influencing Gothic Architecture
Climatic Condition:
Climatic condition varies in Europe from North to South and from East to West.

In North due to dull climate large sized-windows were used to admit side-light, whereas small windows were
used to cut off bright dazzling sun-shine in south.

Also on account of less rainfall in south, roofs were flat whereas high pitched roofs were used to drain off
rain water and snow in north.
Historical Condition:
This includes the loss of English possession in France, division of Germany into number of independent
Kingdoms.

Religious Condition:
By the 12th century the church was strong to determine matters of art and architecture

Church architecture was purified, a large part of the churches finances was invested in new buildings along
with secular sources

Restorations and repairs to existing abbeys and cathedrals along with new foundations

Spread through the Benedictines, Cistercians, Canons and the orders of the friars leading to building of
abbeys, priories and convents

Gothic Architecture
Factors Influencing Gothic Architecture
Social Condition:
Every village had at least 1 parish church

Every organization secular & ecclesiastical had its own religious life which required a chapel, or church

Every family had its own private chapel

Religious institutions in vicinity of homes to safeguard spiritual needs

Integration of religion into the ordinary conduct of life

Expression in the form of buildings

Established monarchies, royalty, upper strata of aristocracy founded chapels and added them to palaces and
castles

Kings founded charterhouses

Need for secular and religious buildings- burgeoning urban expansion

The principle focus of patronage was in churches followed by secular buildings in the Late Gothic period –
gentry and vernacular houses, country houses, commercial, industrial ventures, city centres, colleges,
hospitals etc. establishment of complete towns eg. Venice

Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture, particularly associated with cathedrals and other churches,
which flourished in Europe during the high and late medieval period.

The Gothic period is one which completely broke away from the architecture of Greece and Rome. It was an
antithesis of classical tradition

Gothic was the result of the constant brooding on the theme of a church with novel forms and decoration to
impress and edify the pious congregation.

It emphasizes
Verticality
Features almost skeletal stone structures with great expanses of glass,
Ribbed vaults,
Clustered columns,
Sharply pointed spires,
Flying buttresses and
Inventive sculptural detail such as gargoyles.

A Gothic cathedral or abbey was, prior to the 20th century, generally the landmark building in its town, rising
high above all the domestic structures and often surmounted by one or more towers and pinnacles and
perhaps tall spires.

These cathedrals were the skyscrapers of that day and would have, by far, been the largest buildings that
Europeans would have ever seen.

Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Planning:

Most Gothic churches, unless they are entitled chapels, are of the Latin cross (or "cruciform") plan, with a
long nave making the body of the church, a transverse arm called the transept and, beyond it, an
extension which may be called the choir, chancel or presbytery.

There are several regional variations on this plan.

The nave is generally flanked on either side by aisles, usually single, but sometimes
double.

The nave is generally considerably taller than the aisles, having clerestory windows which light the central
space.

The Plan of a typical Gothic cathedral

Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture

Pointed Arch: Gothic Architecture

Pointed arch was introduced for both visual and structural reasons.

Visually, the verticality suggests an aspiration to Heaven.

Structurally, its use gives a greater flexibility to Architectural form.

The other advantage is that the pointed arch channels the weight onto the
bearing piers or columns at a steep angle.
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Pointed Arch: Gothic Architecture
Used in every location where a vaulted shape is called for, both structural and decorative.

Gothic openings such as doorways, windows, arcades and galleries have pointed arches.

Rows of pointed arches upon delicate shafts form a typical wall decoration known as blind arcading.

Niches with pointed arches and containing statuary are a major external feature.

The pointed arch lent itself to elaborate intersecting shapes which developed within window spaces into
complex Gothic tracery forming the structural support of the large windows that are characteristic of the
style
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture

Vault:

The Gothic vault, unlike the semi-circular vault of Roman and Romanesque buildings, can be used to roof
rectangular and irregularly shaped plans such as trapezoids.

vaulting above spaces both large and small is usually supported by richly moulded ribs.

Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture

Flying Buttresses: Gothic Architecture

The increase in size between windows of the Romanesque and Gothic periods is related to the use of the
ribbed vault, and in particular, the pointed ribbed vault which channeled the weight to a supporting shaft
with less outward thrust than a semicircular vault. Walls did not need to be so weighty.

A further development was the flying buttress which arched externally from the springing of the vault
across the roof of the aisle to a large buttress pier projecting well beyond the line of the external wall.

These piers were often surmounted by a pinnacle or statue, further adding to the downward weight, and
counteracting the outward thrust of the vault and buttress arch as well as stress from wind loading.

Galleries were dispensed with increase in size of cathedrals was possible due to imaginative use of these
buttresses

These provided the same support as galleries but without walls and roofs.
Organization of interior spaces was simplified

Possibility to enlarge clerestory windows eg. Chartres cathedral, Cologne, Amiens

Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Verticality:

A characteristic of Gothic church architecture is its height, both absolute and in proportion to its width.

A section of the main body of a Gothic church usually shows the nave as considerably taller than it is wide.

The pointed arch lends itself to a suggestion of height. This appearance is characteristically further enhanced
by both the architectural features and the decoration of the building.

On the exterior, the verticality is emphasized in a major way by

The Towers and Spires
and in a lesser way by
Strongly projecting vertical buttresses,
Narrow half-columns called attached shafts which often pass through several storeys
Long narrow windows,
Vertical mouldings around doors and figurative sculpture

On the interior of the building attached shafts often sweep unbroken from floor to ceiling and meet the ribs
of the vault, like a tall tree spreading into branches.

The verticals are generally repeated in the treatment of the windows and wall surfaces. In many Gothic
churches, particularly in France, the treatment of vertical elements in gallery and window tracery creates a
strongly unifying feature that counteracts the horizontal divisions of the interior structure.

Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Verticality: Gothic Architecture
Characteristic Features of Gothic Architecture
Light:
Gothic Architecture
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Gothic architecture is the expansive area of the windows and
the very large size of many individual windows.

The internal columns of the arcade with their attached shafts, the ribs of the vault and the flying buttresses,
with their associated vertical buttresses jutting at right-angles to the building, created a stone skeleton.

Between these parts, the walls and the infill of the vaults could be of lighter construction.

Between the narrow buttresses, the walls could be opened up into large windows.

Through the Gothic period, due to the versatility of the pointed arch, the structure of Gothic windows
developed from simple openings to immensely rich and decorative sculptural designs.

The windows were very often filled with stained glass which added a dimension of colour to the light
within the building, as well as providing a medium for figurative and narrative art.
French Gothic Architecture
FRENCH GOTHIC
ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
First experiments of Gothic architecture in 1140 as Paris became the cultural cynosure for W Europe
The sequence of styles in French Gothic is as follows:
1. Early Gothic
2. High Gothic
3. Rayonnant
4. Late Gothic/Flamboyant

• Early Gothic:

Influence of Romanesque evident in Early Gothic

Vaults were added to thin walls culminating
Introduction of variety of wall passage arrangements

• High Gothic:

Increase in scale of buildings – Bourges and Chartres, followed by Riems and Amiens, Beauvais later
Characterized by lightness and soaring spaces
A system of flying buttresses made possible the reduction of wall surfaces by relieving them of part of their
structural function.
Great windows could be set into walls, admitting light through vast expanses of stained glass.
Wall surfaces of High Gothic churches thus have the appearance of transparent and weightless curtains

French Gothic Architecture

FRENCH GOTHIC
Planning - traditional basilican form. It consisted of a central nave flanked by aisles, with or without
transept, and was terminated by a choir surrounded by an ambulatory with 4 chapels.

These elements were no longer treated as single units but were formally integrated within a unified spatial
scheme.

The exterior view was frequently dominated by twin towers.

The facade was pierced by entrance portals often lavishly decorated with sculpture, and at a higher level
appeared a central stained glass rose window.

Additional towers frequently rose above the crossing and the arms of the transept, which often had
entrance portals and sculpture of their own.

Around the upper part of the edifice was a profusion of flying buttresses and pinnacles

French Gothic Architecture

FRENCH GOTHIC
• Rayonnant style:

A reduction of opaque wall surfaces in favor of graceful screens of stone tracery and glass led toward the
formation of the Gothic Rayonnant style around the mid- 13th cent.

The most striking achievements of Rayonnant design, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the Church of St.
Urban in Troyes, have walls almost entirely of glass, held in place by only a thin skeletal frame of masonry.

Less massive in scale • Flamboyant style:

Intimate in decoration Rich decorative repertory of tracery patterns

Covered in tracery and rich details Regional quality of early Gothic

Spread to all provinces Grand scale of high gothic with emphasis on spacious plans and
orders
Private patronage

Archetypal building was the chapel.

French Gothic Architecture

EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM
There were great technological advances during the Gothic period to spread the loads and forces of the
building, through the walls down to the ground, which in turn meant that the Architects could create
dramatic, large, spacious buildings.

Greek spans were limited by narrowly spaced columns, but the Romans wanted to build large, unobstructed
spaces and so used vaults on an unprecedented scale.

A timber roof works in tension, because the vertical loads are distributed along the beams, but stone has
limited tensile capabilities and works best in compression.

The arch answers this problem by working only in compression.

This, along with barrel and groin vaults, were some of the main features that are associated with
Romanesque cathedrals.
The roman arch was built by building the stone
work around a semi-circular frame and then was
held in place by putting a keystone in the centre.

The most important structural developments of

Romanesque architecture is the vault.

The vault was developed to enable the

construction of stone roofs.

French Gothic Architecture

EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM
The barrel vault was created by extending the arch horizontally which meant that much greater areas were
able to be covered that were not possible with the post and lintel construction.

There was one major problem with the barrel vault, the forces of the arch would cause the side walls to
buckle.

To overcome this, the walls of a Romanesque church were very thick and were built with windows being
used sparingly as they reduced the structural integrity.

The groin vault is the result of the intersection of two barrel vaults of equal diameter at right angles to each
other.

The innovation of creating this structure meant that the stresses from the roof could be directed to the four
corners and down the point supports to the ground.

As well as being a more structurally stable design it also

gave the opportunity to link two volumes together.

The Romanesque movement gave the space within the

churches a feeling of grandeur because of the high vaulted
ceilings and stone walls.

French Gothic Architecture

EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM

The Gothic style succeeded the Romanesque style.

Unlike Romanesque buildings, in which a continuous mass of wall is necessary to sustain the load, the Gothic
structure is a skeletal system that transfers roof loads down to the ground at discrete points, thereby freeing
large expanses of wall to be opened for windows.

One can define Gothic buildings by their spatial characteristics, which tend to emphasize the vertical, consist
of articulated but unified cells of space, and have a sense of openness afforded by the construction .

The key attributes associated with Gothic architecture are the pointed arches, rib vaults and flying
buttresses.

During the Gothic era, builders discovered that pointed arches would give structures amazing strength and
stability.

In Gothic buildings, the weight of the roof was supported by the arches rather than the walls. This meant
that walls could be thinner.

They also present considerable design flexibility, as it vary to some extent the angle of the arch.

Steeper angles generate less thrust. This was a great revelation as the architects could now raise vaults to
higher than was possible in Romanesque architecture.

French Gothic Architecture

EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM
Ribbed vaulting functions in much the same manner as plain
groined vaulting, except that it is reinforced with ribs, and
can be made much thinner.

Such light, skeletal construction employing cross ribbed-

vaults replaced the massiveness of Romanesque vaults.

This had the revolutionary effect of opening up the interior

space of a large building such as a church.

The new use of piers to distribute the loads rather than along
a thick wall meant that Gothic architects needed to reinforce
the structure at strategic points, thus the flying buttress was
created.
The buttress join the skeletal structure at these points and are set at right angles. They extend externally and
attach to another structure to divert the loads from the roof.

The new structural techniques encouraged medieval architects to be more adventurous with their designs
because they could now build to heights that were not conceivable before.

This meant that the majority of Gothic cathedrals had very large naves, towers and spires.

With the reinforcement provided by external buttresses, entire wall sections could be devoted to windows,
particularly in the clerestory, where increased window height and width contributed to a diaphanous interior
effect.
French Gothic Architecture
EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM

Window tracery was introduced and became increasingly slender, evolving for plate tracery (punched
openings in a solid field) to bar tracery (thin lines of cut stone set in geometric patterns).

This abundance of light that was entering the building successfully gave that spiritual, tranquil building that
one would be looking for when entering a cathedral.

French Gothic Architecture

EVOLUTION OF VAULTING AND DEVLOPMENT OF STRUCTURAL SYSTEM

Gothic architecture gave the

impression of
“Majestic,
Spiritual,
Grand and
Light filled building”.

French Gothic Architecture

NOTRE DAME, PARIS
Begun by Bishop Maurice de Sully in 1163 and completed with the addition of the west towers
in 1250.
Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic
architecture in France and in Europe, and the naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are
in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture.
The first period of construction from 1163 into the 1240's coincided with the musical
experiments of the Notre Dame school.

• Planning:
The interior of Notre Dame measures 130 m x 48 m and 35 m high.
The Plan comprises of double aisles and ambulatories
Bent axial line
Transept did not project beyond the aisle wall
Transept which divides the interior into a nave and a chevet(altar) of nearly equal proportion,
with a tripartite division of nave and chevet which is reflected in the articulation of the facade,
became the prototype for all the great gothic structures which came after it.

• Interiors:
Originally consisted of 4 levels
An arcade of columnar piers
A Triforium gallery originally covered with transverse barrel vaults and lit by round windows

French Gothic Architecture

NOTRE DAME, PARIS

French Gothic Architecture

NOTRE DAME, PARIS
Decorative oculi opening into tribune roof spaces
Small clerestory windows

• Clerestory:
The clerestory is the space, lit by colored glass,
where elevation and vaulting meet.
The bundle of slender columns which flank each stained
glass window supports the ribs of the vault.
These ribs, used in both transverse and diagonal arches,
reinforce the stone canopy, in effect holding the entire
structure together.

• Altar:
The chevet of the cathedral is composted of a choir, which separates the high altar from
the nave, and a double ambulatory flanked by chapels.
The choir was isolated by a rood screen, a partition often ornamented with openwork

• Vaulting:
Sexpartite vault covering double bays
30m high
Thin wall supporting it articulated by slender face bedded shafts

French Gothic Architecture

NOTRE DAME, PARIS
• Flying buttresses:
Notre Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the
world to use the flying buttress (arched exterior supports).
The building was not originally designed to include the flying
buttresses around the choir and nave.
After the construction began and the thinner walls (popularized
in the Gothic style) grew ever higher, stress fractures began
to occur as the walls pushed outward.
In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around
the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern.
Of a single thrust, they permit greater natural light in the
chapels by transferring structural support to the outside walls,
thus leaving more interior space and allowing larger windows.

• Façade:
The facade is divided into nine equal portions - vertically by the buttresses, which indicate the
interior divisions of the nave, and horizontally by a row of statuary and a series of arcades.
The former marks the transition between the portals and the rose, the latter frames the rose
This triple stratification also reflects the divisions of the elevation into grand arcade, triforium
gallery, and clerestory.

• Tower: French Gothic Architecture

The south tower houses the great bell, which weighs 13 tons
NOTRE DAME, PARIS French Gothic Architecture
NOTRE DAME, PARIS French Gothic Architecture
• Principal modifications of the 13th and 14th centuries:
The windows of the nave, which were enlarged, and the numerous chapels added between the
buttresses.
In the 13th century clerestory windows were expanded downwards swallowing the decorative
oculi of the 3rd storey
Tribunes built later with larger windows and ordinary quadripartite vaults
Thank You