| This work explores the invention of the flying buttress and its structural and symbolic importance for the emerging Gothic style in the twelfth century. A series of case studies---the abbey church of Saint-Denis and the cathedrals of Sens and Paris---is undertaken in order to examine received notions of the origin, function, and medieval reception of this quintessential Gothic device. In concert with a careful reinterpretation of building fabric and restoration documents, new approaches to structural analysis and representation are employed in an attempt to move the discussion beyond the vagaries of structural intuition. When the evidence is examined carefully, the traditional narrative---in which the flying buttress was first deployed in the nave of Notre-Dame of Paris---gives way to a model that is far more aleatory: a series of near-simultaneous experiments in early Gothic structure driven as much by "look" as by structural need, whether perceived or real. |
