Inventing 'Gothic': Notre-Dame d'Etampes and the impact of design process on architectural change in the Ile-de-France, 1120--1150

The advent of Gothic in the twelfth-century Ile-de-France has long prompted fundamental questions about the definition and origins of the style. Historically, a model based on methods borrowed from the biological sciences described the change from Romanesque to Gothic as a natural phenomenon or an evolutionary process. While criticized, these concepts linger in contemporary scholarship, which underemphasizes the role of human agency in creating these structures. The complex pattern of architectural change within the Paris basin can be better understood through an examination of the active choices of builders.;The royal foundation of Notre-Dame d'Etampes, a church largely rebuilt in a series of differing campaigns during the first half of the twelfth century, serves as a primary example for a process-based examination of architectural change. An exacting study of the fabric of Notre-Dame demonstrates that each distinct campaign documents a series of deliberate decisions about the coordination and articulation of structural form by its creators. My analysis emphasizes the ways in which physical processes of planning and construction produced formal and structural innovations. Set in context through comparative studies of related contemporary buildings, my work on Etampes illustrates the lack of a "Gothic system": the interest in integrating structure and articulation found at Etampes results in multiple solutions, both at Etampes and elsewhere. The changes associated with Gothic were not adopted as a standardized set of components, nor did they evolve in a single direction, but instead relied on the requirements and conditions of each site.