Beauvais Cathedral Construction Sequence

LEARN MORE: beauvais.edublogs.org/
Directed by Stephen Murray
Produced by Myles Zhang
Of all the stories of the greatest Gothic cathedrals, the tale of Beauvais is the most exciting. Construction of the Gothic cathedral began in 1225 at a time of bitter turmoil when France was establishing itself as a nation within its familiar modern geographical bounds. Beauvais, the tallest cathedral in France, was never completed, having endured two major collapses and a series of structural crises that continues to this day. Our Sketchup animation follows this dramatic narrative, allowing the viewer to experience and understand the famous collapse that brought down the upper choir in 1284 as well as the underlying design features that led to that disaster. Particularly intriguing is the visualization of the short-lived crossing tower constructed in the mid-sixteenth century and the rivalry between S-Pierre of Beauvais and Saint Peter’s in Rome.
It is hoped that besides appealing to a general audience of cathedral fans, this movie will be useful in the context of the classroom at high-school and university levels. The production was the result of the most rewarding spontaneous collaboration between an Emeritus Columbia professor who is a leading figure in the field of Gothic architectural studies, and a former student who is now pursuing his graduate degree in architecture and on his way to making his own mark in the field of architectural scholarship.

[@borromine]

Simply superb. I’m an architect. Visited Beauvais in 1962. This is brilliant. Informative. And sad too.

[@Ominous89]

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]

Thank you for consistently following me with your thoughtful and researched comments.

[@Ominous89]

@@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.

[@4themusiclovers]

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.

[@saintleger858]

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 !

[@dargordtq5882]

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.

[@yxx_chris_xxy]

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.

[@ChristianJiang]

Omg this video is amazing!! Great visuals and super interesting story… I hope you’ll make more!!

[@MrJojitown]

Awesome animation! A story well-told and illustrated. Bravo

[@voodoosix-centdix-neuf7655]

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 👍

[@matthewmcdonnell7723]

wonderful presentation!! Thank you for all this hard work.

[@ThomasSchutt]

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. ;-)

[@trevormadden4301]

Great work work Sir. Thank you.

[@thebadcellist]

What a terrific presentation!

[@muscularviolist6734]

You’ve earned a new subscriber with that effort. Well done.

[@Lemma01]

What a marvellous resource- exquisitely rendered, immaculately narrated. A gold standard for those aiming to be educative, informative and entertaining. Bravo All.

[@Johannes_Brahms65]

I was at that place years ago and found the remains of the older church fascinating. It was built with old roman square stones.

[@stevevice9863]

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.

[@valentinrabus]

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 🙌

[@orlando1a1]

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.

[@dominiquemichaud7945]

Amazing!

[@Ultramesh]

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.

[@carmengloriacruzatruiz98]

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

[@Cypher791]

Very interesting and well put together… ⛪️🧐

[@britainluver431]

Will there more construction sequence videos on other cathedrals, like Saint Gatien in Tours or Notre Dame in Chartres, etc?

[@tomwagner6334]

If you like this I recommend reading Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth.

[@christopherstephenjenksbsg4944]

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.

[@MylesZhang]

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.

[@tomcarrillo3595]

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.

[@LUX-church-heritage]

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).

[@Kurtlane]

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.

[@vincentzenonrigaud]

Hello, could you please do such a video for Notre-Dame de REIMS ? thanks a lot.

[@jbtechcon7434]

Why did you add music that makes it hard to hear your narration?

[@DonHendrickson-xd7jw]

Good question. So many instructional videos are ruined by loud, obnoxious background music. Video makers have thick skulls that are impervious to reason.

[@jbtechcon7434]

@@DonHendrickson-xd7jw Thank you! It's good to know I'm not the only person annoyed by this stupidity. Why do they ruin their own good work?

[@Cor6196]

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!😂

[@asenseofyarning5614]

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!

[@dodoxasaurus6904]

Wondering if you could do one of the Christchurch Cathedral, even though its not as grand as this.

[@MH-sm5qk]

Great work! why was the stumpy version more appropriate for the 16th century? (I do like it better though)

[@JW-kx1oo]

I know my next Minecraft idea…

[@randbrannigan2590]

The Beauvais and Butte-Heade cathedrals

[@just_in_key]

i kinda want to see it finished ;((

[@sjoerdvangeuns5773]

Very intresting 5*

Incrível!

[@franek_izerski]

I feel like a Beauvais Cathedral construction sometimes.

[@xander___9]

mood

[@MauveStingerStings]

Suggestion: timelpase of cologne catgedral

[@MylesZhang]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4naZYqVmdSaabc

[@MauveStingerStings]

@@MylesZhangI've watched it, it brought me the idea of you making a video applying your timelapse style.

[@frauleinhohenzollern8442]

It's kinda sad we don't still build churches like this. Now they're justass produced buildings, look like super markets

[@golgumbazguide...4113]

Explore Golgumbaz with Guide Jahangir, South India 🇮🇳

[@terriffingtea]

Finally! Now i understand what happened 😂

[@frauleinhohenzollern8442]

The things Europeans built/can build is awe inspiring.

[@sert87]

Those smoke effects are really unnecessary.

[@Frenchylikeshikes]

It is actually'"funny" to see how it is, indeed, not even perfectly aligned.

[@leMiG31]

Either you die a christian or live long enough to see yourself attempting to build the tower of babel

[@darkdroid1596]

Anor Londo.

[@catherinegilbert8312]

【ｐｒｏｍｏｓｍ】 😴

[@kisielekrlz]

"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.

[@MaisonLafitte]

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.

[@Orthodoge]

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?

[@tomcarrillo3595]

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.

[@sodadrinker89]

Because money.

[@llamaalpaca5563]

Why should we demolish a living piece of history and then build another in its pale imitation?

[@mikloslegrady965]

The fake smoke is really annoying.