Why Gothic Architecture is AWESOME

qualifications I'm Chad and I'm here in st. St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne Victoria Australia Now in Australia we don't have real castles, but we do have excellent examples of classical Gothic style

architecture

and that is not far from medieval style

architecture

and I take this opportunity to share with you. what are the main defining principles of

gothic

style architecture and what kind of advances what differences were there in castle architecture compared to

gothic

architecture what changes and what allowed us to build buildings like this that are incredibly beautiful, it's amazing, so please take a very close look at the photographs we are going to take as we discuss these specific architectural principles of Gothic architecture.

Now to start, one of the key differences between castle and gothic style architecture is the thickness of the walls. Now first, you might be thinking, well, that's kind of obvious because in a castle its defensive structure, therefore, you want thick walls, that's true, but it was also an architectural limitation, they didn't know how to build high with stone by making it thin. making it thicker added more support stability in the wall as it went up and what they discovered and the key type of design principle that allowed them to thin the walls into stone structures and build them as tall as what we see behind me.

Now, what you will see here are small walls of our path that extend out from the Cathedral, these are called buttresses. Now a buttress adds action. What it does, it adds some stability now compared to, say, a castle wall. that was as thick as the buttresses extended it well, this Cathedral wall is actually so stable because of those buttresses it has a castle wall if it were a stick as far as the buttresses extended and so, by adding those buttresses the stability than A thick plaster wall would have been fine, but it allows a wall to be much thinner now with thinner walls, which actually adds a lot of adventure in design as it is much easier to add windows and you can build them with less materials. or when we get to Windows, these never seen windows here are not only incredibly beautiful windows, okay, they are also there for the architecture, this beautiful, beautiful, massive, you know, the future window in front of the Cathedral, imagine if that just was starting, is it okay and then transgrade how?

There would be a lot of weight there if that were just weird. The pure stone war will talk at least tons of tons or more or something like that. But by adding this beautiful huge window, we've taken tons of weight off the wall, okay? What does that do now that it's weakened? In general, unless you make the window a certain way and what you see is going on, it's not just an arched window, it's an arched window that splits into smaller arches and then back into smaller arches, okay, and It turns out that it distributes the load on the top of the window to the sides perfectly while maintaining almost as much structural strength as a dual source stone, but the advantages are that it is much lighter and, because there is much less weight pressing the wall actually ends up being much stronger. the trade-off in the sense that what I'm talking about here is the trade-off between the strengths that you get embarrassingly and now the wall is a lot lighter because you removed all this mass and put in this beautiful window that has timbers in it. less stress on the buttresses that hold it up and everything else, so it's funny how when you do something like this for an architectural reason it also opens up what I just sucked, plastically beautiful architectural designs, especially the archers, because the archers are there exclusively for The architecture is fine, but it creates an incredibly beautiful building like the window and this huge feature window is just amazing.

Okay, but look at it closely again because I want you to really look at it and see how it's loading. distributed from that window with all the smaller arches and the small arc minute, it's just ingenious again, an absolutely ingenious architectural design was here and it looks amazing also now in relation to the buttresses, look at what's happening right here, you'll see The top of the buttress is very thin and close to the main structure, okay, but as we go down it slowly gets further and further away as we go down towards the cathedral, what is that?

It is distributing the load well for one of the loads. of the buttress itself will be forced to lean in words towards the Cathedral but also where when there is any stress from the wind enough things like that that make the buttons regret that causes me to continually push it out of it and so in this case if there is a little bit more stress and pressure pushing this tower here a little bit to our right, okay, that load will be angled down to the base of the buttress here, so there's a very, very specific reason why these buttresses they're at an angle like we see here, so this is the side of the cathedral and it really demonstrates what I'm going to say here about what the buttresses do.

You see every buttress in line behind me right now. Imagine if that was actually all the space between those buttresses. Imagine if that was all stone and this wall had been what it will be, about two meters thick to support the height we are seeing here. Well, traditionally, that's what a castle is. The wall would have been nice because you need to know the extent to support the most weight and what we see here, but without the clever design of the buttresses, you can remove most of the weights and the wall ends up being as strong as if it weren't as thick. like the buttress that extends further.

Well, there's another design element that I really want to point out when what's called is called a flying buttress, so it's a little bit different than these buttresses that we see here, it's called a flying buttress now it's hard to see. I'm going to get closer and I might shake a little bit, but you see that little expanse there, that expanse of stone that goes from the inside wall to the outside wall, that's what it's called. a buttress, so with cathedrals like this, they are very, very open and very, very high and what we will see is that they are all in a kind of arch formation, especially the central part, now what that creates is that the arts they distribute the load on the sides sideways, well, I'll tell you that we have a better chance for this flying buttress from the end, okay, and from the roof the roof slopes well and then that load will be pushed out to the left and right . on the sides of this central body of the Cathedral to counteract the fact that this is where the buttress is placed, okay, we are putting that there that puts a counterforce that presses inward on the lower part that is pressed outward from the tip. from the roof and because that back pressure is there which then redistributes the load to the foundation and what we see on the left side of these flying features is again another bug costume, look at that, but it's not a flying one, it's a normal pipe as if it had a specific name.

I'm going to look it up and put it in writing on the screen, obviously here, because this buttress here has an angle like we saw before, let's see our spinner at the top and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes down, okay , that makes this load tilt a little bit, but then it presses against the buttress here, so it presses it inward and it balances and everything balances perfectly and then all that load is pushed down and the next thing I want to point out that the contrast in the tone of the stone is fine, so most of the Cathedral is all dark black stone, but the mortar between them is a lighter color and then what we have is the feature stone and the stones around it. all the windows and the door frames and the other parts of the Cathedral that we have are a brighter color and that creates such a striking contrast and you want it because some of the most beautiful parts of this Cathedral are the windows specifically and, therefore, by giving it a brighter color, a different and contrasting stone tone, it draws the eye's attention to the really beautiful part and looks amazing, so what is not completely obvious about the designs of cathedrals and st.

St. Patrick's Cathedral really is very representative of the classic Gothic cathedral design and I will mention why it's not just a second or you might not notice it, it's that the design is deceptively simple. Well, you can divide the main parts of the designs into fairly clear parts. basic shapes the most prominent central shape and you will need to see it from above to notice that this is a cross, okay, and that is the inner wall of the cathedral and this is what most gothic cathedrals indicate, even if they are not a commercial arm, okay. actually in the shape of a cross and that is the inner wall, now the outer wall is that the walls hug right at that cross and align with the outer towers and if we go over here on the edge, there the The inner wall that has the shape of a cross is between the two flanking towers and then on the outer wall of those flanking towers you have another wall, and that is the outer wall.

Now it's interesting, it's right between the inner wall and the outer walls. is that inside cathedrals they are very open and what that means is that they are internal, they do not extend as a completely solid wall to the floor, but are actually divided by arches. in the interior that opens it but those arches still support all the weights that we are seeing because if we look towards the highest parts of the internal wall that looks like a cross, well, that is stone, there is a lot of weight up there and all those arches support it, but to make those Sable arches, okay, that's what the flying buttresses are for, okay, they are everywhere and also in regular matches, those are buttresses, they are all there to support, okay, the weight , load. weight and also the redistribution of these weights of all the arches that are everywhere and so again look at the shapes we have Krauss, okay, we have square towers, we have arches, we have triangles and squares and then that's really the whole Cathedral , it's deceptively simple, but when you add all these beautiful peaks, towers, arches, window buttresses and have these simple shapes in place, you end up with one of the most beautiful buildings and design styles in the world, it just looks amazing and by that's what we are in st. .

Saint Patrick at this time and out of respect for this wonderful building and those religious practitioners who are currently praying Sunday services have just ended. Of course, I'm being as reverent as possible. Now what we see here is amazing, is that the entire building is completely open, it is absolutely a feat of engineering genius, we go this way, you see these big pillars here and the big pillars there, well, these are the pillars that hold up that internal wall, so if you see us above, we have the main roof. body here and you'll see those windows from the outside, okay, we have here a line here and a line there of arches and pillars and they distribute the load from the top down over the supports and towards the ground, so it's hard to even remember that , wait a second, it was actually a full internal wall, there were two internal walls above us that were completely supported and then when we're here, that's completely open, we have these glorious natural light windows that just give this.

The whole building has an amazing vibe and feel so here we can see the internal walls, the supporting pillars and the external walls on both sides pointing out before it is surprising how open this building is inside. It's amazing and everything is open because of the arches. arches everywhere, okay and always here, I'm going to zoom in closer because this section here, okay, remember the armor from the outside, this cathedral has a huge central tower, well, this is where technically the central tower is, like Yo, where is the tower? there's a lot above us, it's right there and then these four pillars and look how big these pillars one, two, three and four are, it's these four pillars that hold up that huge central tower, so all that weight is there thanks to the great design.

On these bows, all that weight and load is distributed to the sides. Now this load is interesting because there is a huge load pressing down on this arc. Well, that load is actually first pushing out to the sides, so the left port pillar actually wants to be pushed to the left and the right port pillar wants to be pushed out in the right direction, so it should There will be something on either side of the ends, where the pillars connect to the arch. Well, that's where the horizontal forces are, so there must be something holding these pillars up. and arches by pushing back well with an equivalent light to hold that weight and if you could push that weight back well, then it is directed downwards, the next feature ofamazing design in gothic architecture, so we see here, this is what is called vault.

The ceiling is okay, now the vaulted ceiling is kind of complex, but it's not like that, it's actually a combination of many arches, okay, so take a look here and you'll see all the arches going in one direction and another, crisscrossing each other. yes and what is that? Look here, we can see some of those hatches that are part of the vaulted ceilings, so there's a good photo of what I'm talking about: You want a vaulted ceiling when you have a lot of weight on it and the ceiling because it's regular. The supports wouldn't, so let's say if this roof here was built of stone, okay, so if the roof was made of stone it would have a lot more weight on top of it, this kind of roof would never work, it can support the weight of what it is. , but it wouldn't work if it was made of stone and I had more weight, so we have more weight, we need to redirect that load in a more sophisticated way and that's what we have here. this is where you get the vaulted ceilings and they redistribute the weight among the guests, um the pillars here and there, in a cathedral shape, if you look up, that's the center of the cross, okay, this building, smile, the bottom of the cross extends down in that direction and then you have the sides of the cross here and there, well and remember you have the outer walls on each side, but the center wall is a cross and then the top of the cross extends up here and that is what frames the structure of the internal wall of the Cathedral, but outside the cross are the external walls, so you have many benches and aisles and at the top of the Cathedral we have here our individual niches, so if we walk closer, we will.

See them and then these extended again even further out from the outer wall and what are our individual chapels and then each alcove is actually an individual chapel and I think each one is dedicated to a different saint. with these beautiful, I'll just take a look at these beautiful stained glass windows, this one is dedicated to St. Brigid Stiff and the chapel of the Irish saints. We will continue to see each individual alcove and each individual chaplain going around in a circle, so there you go, this is st. St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne Australia and thanks for watching and I hope you learned a thing or two about classical Gothic style architecture or at least I hope you enjoyed it and until next time never bang your head against the wall without an efficient cause or sufficient, since I'm sure you can do it efficiently, but you'll want a good reason to do it.

A good reason to bang your head against the wall. Do you have any children?