Cathedral slices - Update

Nearly there!  The cathedral bay models created as a guide to English ecclesiastic architectural history for the (very soon) forthcoming Cathedrals and Monasteries from the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture are just about ready.  These are something of a record for me in terms of modelling time.  They have taken six weeks from start to now.  To put this into comparison, the model of Wakefield Cathedral I created at the start of the year took almost twice as long and is, arguably, no more complex than these.

Wakefield Cathedral.  Created for an interactive touchscreen by the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture installed at the reopening of the nave in 2013.  (This is just the Cathedral as it stands today - I also modelled it in five periods in the past too.  Whew!)  (Image: A Masinton)

Why the huge time savings?  Many reasons.  The chief ones are that Wakefield taught me a lot about modelling Gothic detail and that I had a very good set of measured drawings and architectural details to work from in the form of antiquarian books now out of copyright and kindly made available on Internet Archive.  Chief among these are the volumes of Britton's Cathedral Antiquities, Bond's Gothic Architecture in England and the (slightly eccentric) Robert Billings' Durham Cathedral and the fabulous  Power of Form.  These deserve posts of their own.  For now, go get them yourself.  (I highly, highly recommend you download the original scan data if you want to use these for modelling.)  Like the £2 coin says (quoting Newton's backhanded swipe at Hooke, of course) - 'Standing on the shoulders of giants.'

Romanesque.  c1066-c1180.  Based on Durham Cathedral choir.  Just a bit more geometry to finish. (Image: A Masinton)

Early English Gothic.  c1180-1280.  Based on Salisbury Cathedral (with bits of Whitby).  A little more modelling needed.  (Image: A Masinton)

Decorated Gothic.  c1280 - c1350.  Based on Exeter Cathedral.  Details need to be added (fiddly bits!).  (This one is by far my favourite.  Image: A Masinton)

Perpendicular Gothic.  c1350 - c1540.  Based on Canterbury Cathedral (with a fictional fan vault - my showpiece modelling achievement for this project).  The fan vault needs the 'spandrels' filled and there are details to fix in the geometry here and there.  (Image: A Masinton)

Cathedrals, one slice at a time

Back in 2009 I created a series of models and animations showing a 'typical' medieval English parish church 'growing up' from the seventh century through the fifteenth century.  While this was a fun distillation of three centuries of architectural history and archaeological scholarship, as well as my own research, it was also intended as a resource for the English Parish Church Through the Centuries DVD-ROM produced by the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture (CnC, for short).

A 'typical' English parish church as it may have appeared in the early sixteenth century.  From The English Parish Church Through the Centuries, Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture.  Source: A Masinton

You can see one of the final animations here.

Fastforward four years and I'm at it again, this time for the followup DVD-ROM from CnC, Cathedrals and Monasteries.  This time, it's an architectural style guide, illustrating medieval church architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation - at cathedral scale.  Rather than following one 'typical' cathedral through the centuries, the idea here is to provide an interactive field guide to individual architectural components, illustrating the key features that will allow you, the interested cathedral-goer, to put a name to 'that fiddly bit up high' and, to broadly understand how old it might be and what it's doing there in the first place.

To do this, I'm taking a leaf from Viollet-le-Duc's book and building one bay of four different cathedrals, one from each of the main periods of medieval church architecture in England, in a kind of 'cutaway'.  You'll be able to take this for a spin, select individual components for closer examination, see common variations on the theme from examples in the wild, and go in-depth with text by noted architectural historian Jon Cannon.

Over the next few weeks I'll post a series of updates to this work-in-progress (WIP) as I develop these pieces.  For now, I'll leave you with a previews of a bay of a Romanesque cathedral based on Durham, and a Decorated Gothic bay based on Exeter.  Enjoy!

Romanesque c1070-1180, based on Durham Cathedral choir (geometry complete but texturing has a ways to go).  Source: A Masinton

Decorated Gothic (c1280-1350), based on Exeter Cathedral nave (geometry nearly complete, no texturing). Source: A Masinton