Architecture Gothic

In our view, architecture is not only about Gothic-scale structures but is also about all structures and relationships used down to the level of code.1 The decision to use a four-tier structure, with a thin client, a Web server, a business application server, and a database, is architectural. But, in the extreme, we consider a consistent use of getXQ and setX(x) methods also to be part of the (detailed) architecture. This view leads to a somewhat less formal definition of architecture. 

The city of Harran has always had the special and mysterious status of a sanctuary. The Crusaders who held Edessa until 1146CE never invaded nearby Harran. Crusader arches and Gothic structures in the city may pre-date the introduction of Gothic architecture into France." " ... 

Sir Christopher Wren, the renowned architect of St Paul s Cathedral in London, attributed the majesty of Gothic architecture to Knights Templar and other Crusaders in bringing back Muslim ideas on science and architecture from the Near East ... 

Simson, O. G. von (1952) The Gothic Cathedral Design and Meaning. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 11 (3), 6-16. 

The development of High Gothic ideas, in architecture and sculpture, can be followed on one site through the successive campaigns to construct Chartres cathedral.5 Pagan motifs withdrew behind crisper lines and structure becomes steadily more attenuated while new structural devices, ribs and bosses, appear as disturbances within a steady improvement of Vitruvian building expertise. 

The dome of St Peter s, completed in 1624 to the designs of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1495-1564), is a product of Gothic practice fully infiltrated by Renaissance ideals. Directly comparable In size to the crossing of Florence cathedral, the design no longer allowed construction rationale to precede architectural effect (figure 5.3). The shell s... 

Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, 1951. Some things are beautifully proportioned, others are not. The notion of an ideal behind appearances began to erode beneath the variety and profusion of real life. 

Nicholas Pevsner, Ruslan and Viollet-Le-Duc Englishness and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture, 1969. Viollet-le-Duc s rationalism is contrasted with Ruskin s emotion in their encounter with Gothic architecture. In their works of criticism, both men were seeking a drive for a contemporary architecture. 

Pevsner, N. (1969) Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc Englishness and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture. London Thames and Hudson. 

With a philosophy based on aesthetics, place, and history, Ruskin appeals to a moral architecture, encouraging builders to reject the techniques discovered in the Renaissance and developed in the Industrial Revolution and to embrace a time when the best buildings were constructed—the medieval Gothic cathedrals of England and Venice. In his later book, The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), Ruskin describes the elements of the Gothic that became foundational for the kind of architecture he proposes, and he provides many examples to illustrate. He points out the three virtues of a building (1) That it act well, (2) That it speak well, and (3) That it look well (Ruskin, 1885, vol. 1, ch. 2, sec. 1). 

The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue and that its Renaissance architectme had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. (Ruskin, 1866, p. 53)... 

For Ruskin, moral feeling, states of temperament, and architecture cannot be separated. He sees the moral elements of Gothic as follows (1) savageness, (2) changefulness, (3) natmalism, (4) grotesqueness, (5) rigidity, and (6) redundance. 

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