Gothic Architecture

      One of the most fascinating of all the times. The architects of the Gothic Era took old ideas, and manipulated them. In effect, they manipulated them to suit their needs. They were doing what nearly 500 years later, Louis Sullivan would put into words: Form Follows Function. The function of many Gothic buildings was to be a religious church. So, the architects said to themselves, "Hmmmm, I want a structure that will astonish all who see it. Also, I want it to seem like it touches the heavens."

     The Gothic era of architecture actually has a specific starting point, a time or person that a historian can say THIS was the beginning. For the Gothic era, we have such a man. The man is a Benedictine abbot called Suger, the place, the Abbey Church of St.-Denis near Paris around 1144. Abbot Suger belonged to a group that had controlled most of the church building in the Romanesque style. The abbot thought that for this particular church, he would try something different. In his writings he told how the old styles were too dull and boring. His genius mind transformed a church in his mind. He would make it so tall it would appear that the top was in heaven. He would make the sides walls of glass, and invent flying buttresses to hold it all up. He could create Heaven on Earth. And so it began, the Gothic style of architecture.