What a rabbit-hole I have fallen into!!
I want to first all extend huge gratitude to Madame Bossette for that year of French.
It’s making Gothic so much easier to navigate.
There was a point where one of the master mason (architects) was anonymous.
Master of Beauvais (Anonymous, fl. 1225-1272)
Hold up… how ?
It’s such an inversion of where we are now in the Real World.
We know who builds stuff nowadays. They have to get permits and check zoning, How did this work back then?
Anyways, this anonymous, His master plan failed. The Vanity. The Hubris for 17ft.
Robot [o.o] The Master of Beauvais inherited a competitive environment and chose to exceed all precedents.
The Design (1225-1272)
The Structure:
- Choir vault height: 157 feet 6 inches (48 meters)
- Bay width: approximately 45 feet
- Wall thickness at clerestory: estimated 16-20 inches
- Height-to-width ratio: approximately 3.5:1 (versus Amiens’s 3:1)
The Buttressing System: The master designed triple-tiered flying buttresses—the most complex system yet attempted:
Upper tier: Intercepted thrust from the high vault approximately 130-140 feet above ground. The flyer spanned roughly 40 feet from the clerestory wall to the outer pier. The angle of inclination was approximately 30° from horizontal—steeper than typical (35-40°), suggesting the master recognized the extreme lateral thrust.
Middle tier: Positioned at approximately 85-90 feet, this flyer provided intermediate bracing and helped stabilize the clerestory wall against wind loads. It also intercepted any thrust from the triforium level.
Lower tier: At approximately 45-50 feet, this buttress primarily served to brace the outer pier itself and provide ground-level lateral stability. It also countered wind loads on the aisle roofs.
The Piers (culées): The outer buttress piers were massive—approximately 12-15 feet square at the base, tapering upward. They were topped with substantial pinnacles, each weighing an estimated 8-12 tons, providing vertical downward force to stabilize the pier against the inward pull of the flyers.
What We Know About the Master
Absolutely nothing. No name survives. No tomb. No inscription. No building accounts identifying him have been found (though fragmentary accounts exist for later reconstruction). This anonymity is particularly striking given the cathedral chapter’s wealth and the project’s ambition.
The Collapse of 1284
What happened: Twelve years after completion, portions of the choir vault collapsed. Contemporary accounts are frustratingly vague. The Chronique de Saint-Denis notes: “The vaults of the church of Beauvais, which were higher and more beautiful than any in France, fell down.”
It’s at this point I remember I was going to tell you about Design Paradigms, Henry Petroski. I picked it up at a thrift store, I lived near a college and very cool books ended up in our thrift stores. I recognized Icarus instantly, although not this lithography. Curious.
It travelled with me for a while, and holds a lot of notes.
There were all these lines that stood out. It’s as though my mind could grasp a concept when presented as bridge designs and how they fail. That my mind resisted when presented in psychological terms.
The original premises
about me
were fallacious
from the beginning,
(That’s all the bad, unworthy, not good enough stuff. It was Never true.)
Especially fallacious as it was propagated
by the people who were responsible
for my development, my education, my understanding
of self and my potential in the world.
The designers of my early childhood were deeply twisted,
badly educated, and had no intentions/desire
to give me basic human rights and dignity.
They were not looking to build something strong, or resilient.
Instead they were deliberately conditioning
for immediate gratification exploitation.
Somehow this Engineering Book broke through.
[Spiritual By-Pass?] not exactly.
It’s more like an Intellectual By-Pass… or Engineered By-Pass
My head could wrap around an understanding
that my heart could not accept.
Facts over feeling.
[o.o] “Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering” by Henry Petroski, published by Cambridge University Press in 1994.
Core Philosophy
- Failure teaches more than success – Engineers learn design principles primarily by studying what went wrong, not what went right, making failure analysis essential to improving practice
Major Design Lessons
- Success can mask error – When designs work despite flaws, the underlying problems remain hidden until conditions change, leading to catastrophic failures later (illustrated by the Dee Bridge collapse)
- Limits exist in scaling – Designs that work at small scales can’t simply be enlarged; physical laws impose constraints on size that require fundamental redesign approaches
- Tunnel vision is dangerous – Focusing too narrowly on one aspect of design while ignoring others leads to blind spots that create vulnerabilities
- History must be used selectively – Previous successful designs don’t always apply to new situations; engineers must understand why something worked, not just that it worked (Tacoma Narrows Bridge lesson)
- Conceptual errors are critical – Mistakes made early in the design concept phase have far-reaching consequences that can’t be fixed by better execution
- Judgment is as important as calculation – Engineering requires balancing technical analysis with experience-based intuition about what can go wrong
- Context matters – Design solutions must account for specific conditions, materials, and constraints rather than applying generic formulas
The overarching message: good design comes from understanding not just how things work, but how and why they fail.
With the heart-understanding we are able to walk away from Denial
and psychology works better.
This opens the next Quest-ion.
How do you build a strong foundation?
How do you build resilience, endurance, sustainability?
Villard de Honnecourt is the closest to deconstructing Gothic Structure.
And it’s not much. Medieval masons were very secretive.
[o.o] The Engineering Problem and Solution
Flying buttresses represent one of medieval architecture’s most elegant solutions to a fundamental structural challenge: how to support tall masonry vaults while maximizing interior space and natural light.
The Structural Mechanics
In Romanesque architecture, the semicircular barrel vault generated continuous lateral thrust along its entire length. This outward pressure required massive, continuous load-bearing walls—typically 8-12 feet thick at the base—resulting in limited fenestration and dark interiors.
The Gothic revolution introduced three interconnected innovations:
The Pointed Arch (ogive): By raising the apex and reducing the span-to-height ratio, pointed arches concentrate lateral thrust at specific points rather than distributing it continuously. The geometry allowed forces to descend more vertically, reducing outward thrust by approximately 30-40% compared to semicircular arches.
The Ribbed Vault: Stone ribs created a skeletal framework that channeled loads to specific pier locations. Between ribs, lighter infill (severies) reduced overall vault weight. This system transformed structural logic from continuous wall support to point loading.
The Flying Buttress: This external structural element intercepts lateral thrust from the vault and channels it to detached vertical piers (culées). The buttress consists of:
- The flyer or arc-boutant: the inclined arch spanning from the upper wall to the outer pier
- The pier or culée: the freestanding vertical support
- The pinnacle: weighted terminal element providing vertical counterforce
The Physics of the System
The flying buttress creates a force resolution system. Vault thrust (typically 30-45° from horizontal) is intercepted by the buttress arch, which redirects forces through its mass to the ground via the pier. The pinnacle’s weight (often 5-8 tons) provides stabilizing vertical load that prevents the pier from tilting inward.
Wind loads were a critical secondary consideration. The tall, thin walls of Gothic structures act as sails. Double-tiered flying buttresses, common by the 13th century, brace the structure at multiple heights against lateral wind forces.
Villard de Honnecourt: A Rare Window
Villard’s sketchbook (c. 1225-1250) is the most complete surviving documentation of master mason knowledge.
Contents:
- Architectural plans (Reims, Laon, Cambrai, others)
- Geometric constructions for design elements
- Engineering devices (perpetual motion machines, water-powered saw)
- Human and animal figures (for sculptural work)
- Notes on proportional systems
What’s missing from Villard:
- Any discussion of forces, thrust, or stability
- Numerical calculations of any kind
- Explanations of why these geometric procedures work
This absence is telling. Either:
- Villard considered such knowledge too secret to record
- Masters didn’t consciously understand the structural principles—they worked intuitively
- Structural knowledge was so fundamental it didn’t require explanation
The Limits of Knowledge
What medieval masters couldn’t know:
Material fatigue: Stone doesn’t fail immediately under stress—it micro-cracks over decades. Masters understood “old stone is weaker” but not the mechanism.
Dynamic loading: Wind gusts, bell ringing, thermal expansion create stress spikes beyond static loads. Masters understood these existed but couldn’t quantify them.
Soil mechanics: Foundation bearing capacity, settlement rates, groundwater effects. Masters used empirical rules (“dig until you hit bedrock” or “three times building height depth”) without understanding soil behavior.
Scale effects: Material strength doesn’t scale linearly. A 150-foot structure isn’t just 1.5× a 100-foot structure—it’s exponentially more challenging.
The result: Masters worked with substantial unknown unknowns. Beauvais failed partially because the master couldn’t know what he didn’t know. Modern engineers have 400 years of science medieval masters lacked.
Epistemological Hubris (Unknown Unknowns)
“We understand how buildings work” when actually:
- Missing entire domains of physics
- No probability theory
- No systems thinking
- No way to test at scale
- No feedback loops fast enough to learn
This isn’t moral failing—it’s cognitive limitation.
Verdict: Not hubris in the moral sense.
They didn’t know what they didn’t know, and couldn’t know what they didn’t know.
I like that last line that cracks me up!
Traveler Chimiru 
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