Plotting Gothic: A Paradox

• Main Author: Stephen Murray
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ubiquity Press 2014-06-01
• Series: Architectural Histories
• Online Access: http://journal.eahn.org/articles/135

The paradox of the title is that while most historians of medieval architecture agree that a combination of geometric and arithmetic methods was generally used to lay out a medieval church, there has been little consensus on the specifics of the process in relation to the design of any particular edifice. I begin by identifying four premises which underlie the debate. I then ask whether the new technologies — laser scanning and computer assisted design/drafting applications — can help. A case study uses newly generated point cloud data from a laser scan of the choir of Beauvais Cathedral. Finally, the notion of ‘plotting’ introduces essential sociological, anthropological and rhetorical dimensions. In the spirit of Roland Barthes ('Le plaisir du texte') and Peter Brooks ('Reading for the Plot'), we can understand the urgency with which the architectural historian may seek to unscramble the hidden codes of the building as compulsive ‘reading for the plot’.