It may have been the 4 a.m. wake up call for the 6 a.m. flight the other weekend, but I was more than intrigued by a review in Dwell Magazine of David Stephenson's Heavenly Vaults : From Romanesque to Gothic in European Architecture. Thought you might be too...
"David Stephenson's new book of photography is a love letter to the intricate, seemingly sui generis vaults of Europe's Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and churches. Half the wonder of these soaring architectural feats is that they were devised and built at all. The other half comes with the realization that we will never build this way again: It takes too long. It's too expensive. We don't know how.
These buildings, some nearly a millennium old, are charged with the grandeur of God, as though their architects, suddenly doubting that it could be read in nature, decided to codify it in stone. The skyward vaults suggest their faith's holy order, the majestic possibilities of men working to glorify their creator, the intimation, the endurance of infinity." (October, 2009)"
photos courtesy of Princeton Architectural Press
Ohhh ya, I read about this in Dwell, too, and was super intrigued! Church architecture and castles and all those other prominent buildings with vaulted ceilings excite me greatly...
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