Notre-Dame of Paris and the anticipation of Gothic

In his Entretiens sur l'architecture Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-leDuc not awayed four schematic plans that, seen in succession project a dynamic theory of medieval architecture [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(1) In the first plan sum of two units parallel lines of small circles race inside two continuous bands; individual is invited to think of the thin columns and thin outer walls of a wooden-roof Roman or Early Christian basilica. In the next to the first (hypothetical) basilica the weight and thrust of masonry vaults has necessitated thickened walls and supports. In the third, the vaults are supported by dint of compound piers and thick exterior walls reinforced with buttresses(2) In relation to these three paper "edifices," expressing the first millennium of ecclesiastical architecture, the fourth is seen to be radically different. It is as if the exterior wall had been shattered into segments and each section rotated through ninety degrees to provide the potential for a series of rigid external sustains capable of bearing arched swells (flying buttresses) to receive the lateral thrust of high vaults. Thanks to the inherent force and rigidity of this exterior space frame the designer of the fourth "edifice" could open relatively slender supports in the main arcade, referring back to the first "edifice." The issue was the potential for a kind of sleight of hand or deception - a tall, to the full vaulted superstructure that could be supported (apparently) upon slender interior supports. This was in truth a revolution in the art of building.(3) It was a revolution that hanged on foresight, or anticipation. Thus, the structural requirements of the superstructure are anticipated by means of the radically new forms of the infrastructure.(4)

In his Dictionnaire raisonne de l'architecture francaise du XIe au XVIe siecle Viollet-le-Duc explained that it was in the twelfth-century nave of Notre-Dame of Paris that this radical change took place [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].(5) greatest in quantity important for Viollet-le-Duc were the revolutionary aspects of the monument: "The Romanesque tradition of construction is already completely abandoned in the cathedral of Paris at the extremity of the twelfth century: there is nothing left on the contrary supports and arches. The rib-vaulted combination of parts to form a whole of construction is frankly inscribed in this remarkable monument"(6) Viollet-le-Duc believed that the builders of Notre-Dame were men capable of taking a great leap and radically rethinking the principles of architectural design held by means of their contemporaries and predecessors. Was this a conclusion that he imposed upon the monument as a follow of his own peculiar nineteenth-century mentality and his chauvinistic assessment of la genie francaise? Was it a iniquitous political strategy to exaggerate the importance of "his" record in order to assure a generous roll on of funds for the enormously expensive campaigns of restoration - work from which he himself gained directly? These are certainly the potential solutions favored by means of our own deconstructive climate of thought

novel scholarship, while refraining from any direct engagement with the archaeological data underlying Viollet-le-Duc's understanding of Notre-Dame of Paris in the history of architecture or from any systematic review of the enormously rich historiographical documentation, has dismissed like teleological conceits, compromised, as they are, by dint of the taint of modernism. We are told in the greatest in quantity recent monograph that Notre-Dame was, in fact, conceived and built entirely without flying buttresses; that flyer are not smooth necessary for the structural integrity of like an edifice.(7) Flying buttresses, it is alleged, were added sole in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - principally as a means to evacuate the rainwater from the high cover along the gutters set in their tufts The massive outer uprights of the cathedral, it is claimed, rise from a later intervention. The intellectual atmosphere of our hold postmodern world, generally hostile to the idea of the developmental, forward-moving dynamic inherent in Viollet-le-Duc's four-unit progression, guards to reject the idea of the "great monument" as a vehicle of change. Today's agenda look afters to privilege the retrospective power of buildings, calling upon us principally to identify ways in which meaning is encod in the edifice end "quotations" of venerable prototypes known to the beholder rather than recognizing the occasional intellectual and technological leap that might allow a particular mode of building to be utterly different from what went before, anticipating the future(8)

To reanimate the debate above what might, at first sight, appear to be an excessively familiar record [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED], three strategies are here propos First, we must recognize the inherent slipperiness of the true architectural forms themselves. Second, an overview of existing historiographic sources will provide an archaeology of knowledge in which we can recognize a clear pattern in the range of solutions propos above a one-hundred-and-fifty-year period. And third, a limited archaeological exercise will allow us to proof existing wisdom and finally to reach surprising fresh conclusions.