Developing the Extensions

This is how the extension will be supporting the existing flying buttress while also providing circulation to the triforium level.

Views

Approaching the cathedral from south east. The new walkway between the proposed extensions.

Back to Two Centers

Flying Buttress Extensions

Decissions

I've been editing the work, putting it together for the preview presentation on friday.

There's a new guideline I've found on my last visit to the site which is originated from the chapel walls. Following that line, these triangular "mini mountains" are formed. 4m is the ceiling height for the spaces shown.

There are two levels in these slices, at +4m in this rendering above, below the first level is pulled up to +8m, and the second is at +24m.

Two levels for now.

Endless Survey

The accuracy of the digital model is very important for the proposal. It feels almost an endless process but I've just updated the openings (gray colored). My aim is to understand the daylight entering the cathedral properly after this accurate openings study.

Two Centers

After my visit to Beauvais, I felt the importance of the daylight and how it affects the interior more than anything else in the cathedral.

The challenges for the design is becoming clearer,

LIVING AROUND THE CATHEDRAL

WHY

Beauvais is not a touristic city, the cathedral should not be treated as a potential tourist attraction. It is more interesting if the amazing interior of the cathedral becomes part of the city life more than one day of the week, the proposal aims to pull people to LIVE around the cathedral, not TOUR.

Beauvais is at the very center of Amiens, Rouen and Paris triangle and its airport is increasingly used by budget airlines and Disneyland Paris visitors.

HOW

- Good transportation links to airports, stations and other cities.

- Interesting vistas, pleasurable interactions with the rest of the city fabric, landscape.
- Jobs, only Beauvais Cathedral has three unemployment agencies on the perimeter of the building.

CELEBRATING THE INTERIOR

WHY

There is an endless, ongoing effort to keep the exterior of the cathedral clean and attractive while the interior requires much less work to maintain itself beautiful and functioning. Also, in terms of structural decisions, flying buttresses were the sacrifice done for the atmosphere created inside the cathedral. The proposal must be a continuation of this effort, celebrating the interior, feeding it with functions that are host around the cathedral.

HOW

- Additional structure, supporting the cathedral on the sides. 

- Some of the chapel windows and upper openings will become alternative entrances to the cathedral. 

- It is not affordable to sacrifice from the daylight entering the cathedral. Therefore new openings can be considered.

Lille hosted the great development in 90's developed around the Eurostar International Station. Still the airport of Lille is being used as half of the Beauvais-Tille Airport. While the population of Beauvais is very low in comparison to Amiens, Rouen and Paris.

Since on this triangle all cities have their own cathedrals, I compared the size of Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, Rouen and Beauvais Cathedrals next to each other with the numbers in the maps.

Bridging the Spaces

The interior of the cathedral is the most important space in the building. I would like to be able to make connections between the spaces around cathedral by bridging the two ends on two sides every time. The challenge by doing so is keeping the sufficient amount of daylight that gives the character to the interior of the cathedral. In the representation above, the walkway height is 4m and the width is defined by the existing openings.

Introducing these connections prevent some of the daylight enter the cathedral, to balance this, the old location for the tower can be opened up again, which can also become the "mountain top" for the proposal.

Flying Buttresses

It has been very busy two weeks with Technical Studies submissions for AA fifth years, therefore the project blog has not been updated. From now on, you can see more updates for the next few weeks.

The resolution for the existing flying buttresses is becoming clearer, sharper with my third visit to the site.

Instead of seeing the arches, horizontal connections as the flying buttresses, focusing on the towers forming the flying buttresses is more valid. They have a potential of becoming spaces themselves since some are 4 x 2 metres sized.

Spatial Tests

Mont Beauvais

The project is a lightweight structural web wrapping around the Beauvais Cathedral, supporting the Cathedral; aligned to the existing flying buttresses as extensions. While doing this, this lightweight web also hosts sequence of spaces to create a compact city around the Beauvais Cathedral just like how cities are attached to the cathedrals in Mont Saint Michel, Laon in France.

Just like how the gothic cathedrals were taking the nature: skeleton structures as their precedents, the project aims to have the same approach by forming a building with columns and arches. Supporting churches with building new extensions has been happening throughout the history just like how Sinan built buttressing for Hagia Sophia's dome and the scaffolding that was removed 2010, stayed inside the building for 17 years supporting the dome for the restoration work.

More Precision

For the TS submission I am focusing on these first four flying buttress extensions in detail.

Even though I've been avoiding to have arches in this extension of the cathedral not to be imitating the old building, For the large spans I would prefer to have arches instead of diagonal crossing steel which makes the building very much look wild / out of context.

More like a spider-web, every perpendicular plane can be stabilized with the use of these arches also across the flying buttresses.

Flying Buttress Design

Straight flying buttresses vs chapel extensions.

Designing the Frame

Frame has to allow maximum level of light to go through.

New Buttresses

Flying Buttresses were a necessity in the Gothic Cathedral. They exist to create the amazing interior space for the cathedral without any need of a visible structural support. The cathedral extension I'm building does the same thing. The flying buttresses' extensions stand for the great interior spaces. They are the frames these interior spaces sit on and are hung on.

In the rendering below, the extensions are seen as solid frames, again. However, the interior is subtracted.  Two sides of the new flying buttresses are different in terms of the location of the openings.

Keep in mind that these buttresses are used for circulation + structure at the same time. Therefore the 1m-2m thickness of them will be useful.

A very quick screen capture of two section drawings to show how two spaces intersect on the flying buttress extensions.

Three sequences