Finally, there it is! What a story this is. Makes sense why it took ages to build a cathedral. Spectacular details and excellent story telling. What a work this must have been to put this all together. Both the video AND the cathedral in real life. Awesome.
@@MylesZhang No, thank you! Our conversation helped me developing in reconstructive architecture. I'm really learning from your work. I really love the reconstruction of the lantern tower and the display of the Notre Dame like twin towers in front of it. And then its own designed version. To what it is right now and how it all barely holds together, still after centuries. And then the zooming in on the details... Amazing work.
Thank you for this remarkable video! What you don't mention is that the iron tie rods have existed between the buttresses since they were built in the Middle Age, and that it was the thoughtless intervention of an architect of historic monuments in the 1960s that led to their removal, on the grounds of presumed "historical inauthenticity". It didn't take thirty years for worrying structural disorders to be observed in the building and for attempts to be made to stabilise it using these wooden supports, before installing new tie rods that were less effective than those used in the Middle Age, some of which acted as tension rods while others acted as compression springs in a complex assembly designed to absorb the vibrations resulting from the violent winds blowing over the hill on which the cathedral is built.
What a terrific video. I visited the cathedral of Beauvais last year and read about the highly unfortunate history, but this video made it all more clear than ever before. Still the cathedral, despite being unfinished, is an amazing piece of gothic architecture.
Merveilleuse explication concernant la construction de cette superbe cathédrale, la nef la plus haute de France et qui a résisté aux bombardements anglais et allemands en 1940. Longue vie à la cathédrale de Beauvais ! Merci !
This is such a nice video, I loved it. I'd like to add that there is a third culprit to the two collapses, in addition to design flaws and strong winds: The low quality/strength of the "local" stone used.
As always, I very much enjoy your animations and historical accounts. I had a general idea of how far construction went as well as a few collapses, but this has solidified my understanding of them much more extensively. I would love to pick your brain sometime over your research with French Gothic. ;-)
Great vidéo, I just visited this cathedral yesterday and had so much questions about it. Your work allowed me to understand the chronology of succès and fails leading to such a strange cathedral. Thanks a lot 👍
Merci pour cette vidéo ! Super travail, Habitant à Beauvais, j'avais déjà lu l'histoire de la construction mais cette vidéo permet de beaucoup mieux comprendre cette longue histoire de construction 🙌
What a marvellous resource- exquisitely rendered, immaculately narrated. A gold standard for those aiming to be educative, informative and entertaining. Bravo All.
Thank you, for the fantastic insight into the mind-boggling complexities that constitute the constructional aspirations of a cathedral like Beauvais. I believe there are issues with the pier design, that do not help with the preservation of this gorgeous building.
Well done! Thank you for such a detailed presentation. The graphics are excent and beautifully drawn. I visited this cathedral 25 years ago and it is still impressive even though it was never finished. One small suggestion...The background music had a tendency to drown out your narration. I don't think the music is necessary, or at least make it as quiet as possible.
As always, an excellent video Myles. Despite its multiple collapses and continuing structural problems, and its incomplete condition, this has always been one of my favorite Gothic cathedrals. I love it not only for its great height, impressive as that might be, but also for its design. The Rayonnant clerestory of the hemicycle is magnificent. I only wish the original straight bays of the choir, with their wide arcades, allowing dramatic views into the aisles, had been preserved. I also love the much later transept facades --perhaps the *pinnacle* of Flamboyant Gothic design. I do wonder what you and Professor Murray think of Robert Mark's structural analysis of the choir collapse. I don't have the reference immediately available, but if I remember correctly he thought that the immense height of the exterior buttress piers and the nearly horizontal slope of the flyers may have contributed to the collapse, and you touch on that in the video. Do you think more steeply sloped flyers, perhaps vaulting over both aisles in the manner of Notre Dame, Paris, might have stiffened the structure enough to prevent the collapse? As for the central tower, the church authorities were foolish to even consider a tower of such height on such slender piers. I can't help but feel their ambition outweighed their common sense. I am surprised that any mason would have even considered building it. As an aside, I absolutely love the Flamboyant design for the west front. I know it's conjectural, but it lives up to the promise of the transept facades.
Thank you, Christopher, for your time and thoughts. This animation with Professor Murray stretched for several hundred hours over the past year. This "unpaid" passion project pays off in other and greater ways. The misalignment of the hemicycle with the straight bays of the choir produced a very wide third bay, at least two meters wider than all the others. This was due to different teams of master masons and interruptions in the work over several decades. By the time the misalignment of the hemicycle was realized, work had progressed so far above the foundation height that masons bridged the gap anyway with faulty vaults. This third bay is an origin of the collapse. The cathedral in cross section also appears tall and square in contrast to the triangular cross section of Notre-Dame and most other major cathedrals. Due to extreme wind oscillations, metal tie braces were added in the 1990s between the upright buttresses to reduce lateral wind load. The width of the upright buttresses significantly narrow above the height of the choir aisles, also due to different phases of construction. Prof. Murray describes this with the analogy between Icarus vs. Daedalus. The new masons took design risks that their fathers and predecessors would not, and the building's material fabric shows unrealized ambition over generations. In the final analysis, the full extent of collapse and its origins remain shrouded in some uncertainty. The masons post-collapse seem to have lost some faith in their abilities. The three wide bays of the choir were transformed into six narrow bays with the addition of additional piers, and the quadripartite vaults were transformed into hexpartite. Whether this intervention (and late stabilization in the 1990s) was necessary can be debated, but it did sacrifice the voluminous and open interior in the interest of the safety we see today.
Just thinking about it but, on the first collapse where the buttress collapsed inward causing the wall and part of the vault to collapse. Wouldn’t it make sense to put more flyers top to bottom to make it more stable? Where the part of the buttress was bending inward, I feel like that is where a flyer should have been installed. And since the balance was uneven it would make sense to put an extra flyer and none to the either side to compensate the balance forces. But, I do not think it would still stand on such delicate pillars even if it was added.
Interesante la reconstrucción de la histórica Iglesia en sus etapas, anteriores y en actual majestad de Arquitectura de alto nivel como en aquellos tiempos Gloriosos........ Es una alegría fortaleza inmensa su restauración como corresponde a Francia....Gracias mil gracias
Good video. Interesting history. I heard that it was the pumping out of the constantly flooded underground parking garage on the other side of town, near the Mairie, that had caused the wet sub-structure around the cathedral foundations to dry out and to cause movement resulting in the wooden buttresses to be added for protection in the 90s.
My absolute favorite of all cathedrals. I never saw it, so it's an impossible dream. I wish everything that could be would be taken off, and the whole thing destroyed, but then rebuilt correctly, an exact replica of the full grandest design, but perhaps without the tower.
Beautiful! Can you make the same for the Utrecht Dom Church (former st Martin’s cathedral)? It’s nave collapsed after a storm in 1674, but probably also as a result of poor building (due to a lack of funds).
"Backward medieval peasants" constructed this with some basic tools. Nowadays, concerete and glass shapleess abominations are built and they call it architecture and moderna art.
As I love gothic architecture (and architecture in general) I do not understand your comment. You are trying to say that Beauvais as a building is "better" than modern concrete and glass structures? I can only call it a very pretentious attitude. After all it is a story of a multiple fail. It collapsed a few times (!) and needs to be secure today! Moreover, there were no peasants but masonry experts who cut stone and raised it. You have that silly attitude of people who will love everything old and romanticize it just for the sake of hating parent day achievements.
Good question. So many instructional videos are ruined by loud, obnoxious background music. Video makers have thick skulls that are impervious to reason.
It’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? I got halfway through and just had to stop - the cultivated voice sounds like Queen Victoria’s son Edward being recorded on a cylinder by Edison or Marconi circa 1903!😂
I turned captions on for some help, but when he narrates the height of the tower as being 450 feet, the captions say 300 feet. I like the concept for this channel but there are some obvious technical issues. Hope they are eventually fixed because the channel could be very popular!
Just deconstruct it, fix the problems and rebuild it, and FINISH it. Why must everything in the modern world view old things as dead exhibits that must be preserved exactly as they were before the last hundred years.let the ruins sit because they’re pretty and contemplative?
Well to fix the problems that is in this cathedral, I think funding is going to be a bit of a problem for the cathedral. And also the cathedral is ridiculously delicate and fragile and how tall it is, remove one thing out of its place and it could go tumbling. They probably decided it was best to leave it in a forgivable state.