Date: Thursday 20th November 2019
Venue: G04a
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
For the last half century, the concept of linearity has been considered a constitutive aspect of the stylistic identity of Gothic architecture. Prevailing aesthetic theories hold that the buildings constructed in England and France during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were not just linear in appearance, but actively conceived in linear terms, embodying a linear set of values and design principles articulated through revolutionary developments in architectural draughtsmanship.
Yet despite this, architectural historians have expended comparatively little attention on the practical processes by which these lines were created and translated into three-dimensional forms. By focusing on the tools available for the design of Gothic buildings (namely small-scale drawings on parchment, full-scale incised drawings on plaster or stone and wooden or canvas templates), this paper presents a critical reassessment of the relationship between their multiple linearities and their realisation in stone. In the process, it will challenge the value structures that have imposed on the Gothic style, questioning received assumptions about the supposed rationality of its lines and proposing a more distributed model of architectural conception than has often been assumed by scholars.