Project - Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

No. 2 - 2: Exploring Ulmer Münster., Germany: (13/5/10)

 

View of the buttresses and pinnacles on the south side of Ulmer Münster.

 

Characteristics of Gothic churches and cathedrals

 

In Gothic architecture, a unique combination of existing technologies established the emergence of a new building style. Those technologies were the ogival or pointed arch, the ribbed vault, and the flying buttress.

 

The Gothic style, when applied to an ecclesiastical building, emphasizes verticality and light. This appearance was achieved by the development of certain architectural features, which together provided an engineering solution. The structural parts of the building ceased to be its solid walls, and became a stone skeleton comprising clustered columns, pointed ribbed vaults and flying buttresses.

 

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.

 

Flying Buttress.

- a flying buttress, or arc-boutant, is a specific type of buttress usually found on religious buildings, not all of which are cathedrals. They are used to transmit the horizontal force of a vaulted ceiling through the walls and across an intervening space (which might be used for an aisle, chapel or cloister), to a counterweight outside the building. As a result, the buttress seemingly flies through the air, and hence is known as a "flying" buttress.

 

Its presence outside the clerestory walls created a web of stonework that disguised the solidity of the structure, and gives the impression that the cathedral is being suspended from heaven. It balanced the network of ribs under the interior vaults that give the same impression, as if the upper stonework is forming a tent-like canopy over the congregation. It has been suggested that these external arches created a screen that 'hid' the walls to diminish the impact of weightiness so common in earlier architecture. From the inside the wide windows and the increasingly thin shafts under the vaults continued the feeling that the building was an illusion, that weight had become weightless. Hence the phrase Canopy of Paradise.

 

Construction

- to build the flying buttress, it was first necessary to construct temporary wooden frames which are called centering. The centering would support the weight of the stones and help maintain the shape of the arch until the mortar was dry. The centering was first built on the ground by the carpenters. Once that was done, they would be hoisted into place and fastened to the piers at the end of one buttress and at the other. These acted as temporary flying buttresses until the actual stone arch was complete."[4]

 

Because the majority of the load is transmitted from the ceiling through the upper part of the walls, making the buttress as a semi-arch extending far from the wall provides almost the same load bearing capacity as a traditional buttress engaged with the wall from top to bottom, yet in a much lighter and cheaper structure. And because the flying buttress relieves the load bearing walls with a much smaller area of contact, much larger voids are able to be built into those walls, such as for windows, than would otherwise be possible. Occasionally, due to the great height of the vaults, two semi-arches were used one above the other, and there are cases where thrust was transmitted through two or even three buttresses in a series. The vertical counterweight portion of flying buttress were often capped with pinnacles to give greater power of resistance.

Wikipedia

 

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Taken on October 17, 2007 at 13:13

Done