The Gothic rib vault

Assembled from 33 blocks · 2 evidence · 36 related

1. Story
2. A vault built as a skeleton of stone arches - the ribs - with thin panels of masonry (the webs or severies) filling between them. Two things follow. First, the pointed arch used for the ribs can be made steeper or shallower at will, so ribs of different span can be brought to the same crown height; a Romanesque semicircular vault cannot do that, which is why Romanesque bays tend to be square and Gothic bays need not be. Second, the ribs can be erected on relatively light centring and the webs built afterwards, which cuts the cost of the timber formwork that dominated vault construction. Whether the ribs actually carry the vault, or mainly stiffen and organise it while the shell carries itself, has been argued since the 19th century and is not settled. Either way the vault concentrates its load onto the piers, and the wall between the piers stops being structural - which is the opening through which the glass arrives.
3. Knowledge
4. The voussoir arch
5. The Gothic rib vault
6. The flying buttress
7. Connections
8. The voussoir arch
9. The flying buttress
10. Durham Cathedral
11. Chartres Cathedral
12. Durham roofs a great nave with ribbed vaults
13. Suger's choir at Saint-Denis is consecrated
14. The high vaults of Chartres close at about 36-37 m
15. Fire destroys the roof and spire of Notre-Dame de Paris
16. Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), Rome
17. Pont du Gard
18. Load path
19. Corbelling (the false arch and false dome)
20. Corbelling (the false arch and false dome)
21. The dome
22. The Gothic rib vault
23. Roman builders adopt pozzolanic concrete
24. The Pont du Gard carries an aqueduct on three tiers of arches
25. The Colosseum opens: arch and concrete at civic scale
26. The Gothic rib vault
27. Chartres Cathedral
28. Notre-Dame de Paris
29. Notre-Dame de Paris is begun
30. The high vaults of Chartres close at about 36-37 m
31. Evidence
32. Reconstructs how Gothic vaults were actually erected, with centring, falsework and sequence as the central problem, and treats the economy of timber formwork as a driver of the rib vault. Supports the STRUCTURE_GOTHIC_VAULT and Gothic site records. V55 verification basis: real and standard, not consulted in this session.
33. Photoelastic model studies of Gothic structures arguing that wind loading on the high roof and clerestory, rather than vault thrust alone, was a principal design driver for flying buttresses, and that upper flyers are best explained as wind bracing. V55 verification basis: real and widely cited; not read in this session, and the argument is summarised here from its reception rather than from the text.