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The completed construction of the Sagrada Família is now expected for 2026, multiple international outlets are reporting. The announcement made recently by the group responsible for managing its construction ends years of speculation as to the exact opening date for Antoni Gaudí’s monumental... View full entry
Plans for the contemporary replacement of some of the stained glass windows inside Notre Dame Cathedral’s damaged interior have sparked a considerable outcry from the public a year before the Parisian landmark is set to begin reopening in the wake of the destructive 2019 fire. Calls for a... View full entry
France had previously reversed plans for the restoration’s completion before the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games prior to the death of project overseer General Jean-Louis Georgelin in August. The replacement of the original 19th-century spire was heavily debated before officials decided... View full entry
Research from a professor at the University of Aberdeen has advanced evidence that the art and practice of architectural drawing may have been invented by a 12th-century Scottish clergyman working in Paris around the time of the construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other important... View full entry
Notre-Dame Cathedral's spire will be back in place by the end of the year, but a full reopening following the devastating fire of 2019 will not happen before next year's Paris Olympic Games.
The reconstruction is still on track for completion by the end of 2024, the culture ministry told AFP.
But the sharp spire, added by architect Eugene Viollet-Le-Duc during the cathedral's redesign in the 19th century, will be back in place by the end of 2023, the ministry said.
— France 24
This setback constitutes a major blow to French President Emmanuel Macron’s lofty initial promise to have the restoration work completed in time for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games. Spectators had called into question whether or not the goal was feasible or even salutary from the... View full entry
Kengo Kuma and Associates (KKAA) has begun construction on a much-needed cathedral addition that will add a contemporary feel in "harmonious dialogue" with a 12th-century structure set on the edge of the historic Loire Valley in France. The cathedral is host to several important polychromatic... View full entry
Little over a year ago the world nearly lost one of its most recognizable examples of Gothic architecture, as the spire and a sizeable part of the roof of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris burned to ashes. Now the debate carries on about what to do with the damaged building. [...] What does it mean to be "Gothic" anyway? If something is Gothic can it also be contemporary? For such questions we need a little background. — CNN
Highlighting the one year anniversary of the disastrous fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, architect Mark Foster Gage takes us on a quick history of Gothic architecture in order to tease out the lessons this historical style can lend to contemporary architectural design. View full entry
Notre Dame is not stable and urgently needs reinforcing. [...]
The collapse of a part of the vaults has severely reduced the safety of its structural system, which, in the case of a Gothic cathedral, does not rely on the heavy mass of the walls, as in classical architecture, but on discharging weight through clustered columns, external flying buttresses and counter-supports—a structural “exoskeleton” that until now has been extremely effective and resilient.
— The Art Newspaper
A new assessment of the Gothic cathedral's structural system after the devastating April 15 fire shows that the stability has been severely weakened by various factors and warns that the walls could now fail to withstand strong wind gusts. The morning after the incident: Notre Dame's spire is gone... View full entry
If our recently published article featuring a computer mouse/Eames chair mashup didn't provoke you, this one might just do the trick. With his series of heavy utility trucks outfitted in Gothic ornament, artist Wim Delvoye conceived of a mashup of two elements nearly a full millennium apart... View full entry
Nestled into an armpit of Westminster Abbey, hidden behind a flying buttress that leaps up to the chapterhouse, stands what appears to be a gothic space rocket. Sinuous bronze tracery loops its way up the faceted shaft, framing crystalline windows between bands of lead arrowheads, like go-faster stripes shooting towards the heavens. — The Guardian
British architect Ptolemy Dean's new addition to Westminster Abbey, The Weston Tower, is the first significant addition to the gothic structure since 1745. This new $30m tower provides the first public access to the church's triforium space above nave. Here visitors can climb to the attic and... View full entry
A 30m-tall Gothic cathedral built of branches and twigs that was set alight on Saturday (17 February) causing controversy in Russia. The burning took place at Nikola-Lenivets, a rural artists’ colony 200km south of Moscow, and was the culmination of pre-Lenten carnival festivities known as Maslenitsa. The event is often likened to the US Burning Man festival. — theartnewspaper.com
Artist Nikolay Polissky, founder of Nikola-Lenivets, creates impressive land art installations to burn for Russia's Maslenitsa festival each year. This Russian folk tradition is celebrated during the last week before Lent and traditionally ends with the burning of a scarecrow. This year, the... View full entry
The restoration aims not only to clean and maintain the structure, but also to offer an insight into what the cathedral would have looked like in the 13th century. Its interior was designed to be a radiant vision, as close to heaven on earth as a pilgrim might come, although many modern visitors have responded more with shock than with awe. The architecture critic Martin Filler has described the project as a “scandalous desecration of a cultural holy place.” — The New York Times
The decade-long restoration of Chartres' grand cathedral (rebuilt in its current Gothic style between 1194 and 1220) isn't going over without controversy: is the dirt that's currently being scrubbed off its walls, ceilings, and even Madonna statues, part of the building's history or merely... View full entry
[Andrew] Tallon, 46, wasn't the first to realize that laser scanners could be used to deconstruct Gothic architecture. But he was the first to use the scans to get inside medieval builders' heads.
"Every building moves," he says. "It heaves itself out of shape when foundations move, when the sun heats up on one side." How the building moves reveals its original design and the choices that the master builder had to make when construction didn't go as planned...
— National Geographic
