Cage chantries were institutions that celebrated masses for the good of the soul of their founder. In late medieval England chantries were the most popular type of religious foundation and could be founded at existing altars, in existing chapels, or involved the building of an external or free-standing chapel. Cage chantries were physically separate chapels erected within existing churches in the period 1366 to 1555. These were erected in cathedrals, collegiate and parish churches. Fifty-four have been positively identified for this study. This group has been examined within both its documentary and physical contexts, as far as evidence allows. These chapels were founded disproportionately in monastic churches, an important factor as so few of these buildings survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Therefore these are representative of the others that were most probably founded, but have not survived or been identified. Physically these chapels appear only in churches with a clerestory and at least one aisle. Within these physical constraints, this group has emerged to allow an analysis of the process of foundation not seen in other studies. This process involved not only the endowment or funding arrangements for the celebration of perpetual masses for the soul of the founder, but also an insight into the choices made. The choices for founders included not only the church in which the chapel was located, but also the location within that building. These were small chapels with little room for a congregation, yet proved a popular choice due to the flexibility of their possible locations. Many were close to spiritually significant sites such as shrines or altars or were linked physically to the building projects of their founders. These founders are demonstrated not to endow these chapels in the form described by other chantry studies. A comparison of the process outlined by Kathleen Wood- Legh with the majority of this group has highlighted some of their common features. It is the foundation process and the type of mother house that proscribe the documentary sources available for study. Each cage chantry encapsulates the aspirations of its founder modified by practical considerations, both of space within their mother church and also the permission of these authorities. These were essentially highly personal foundations, located mainly in prestigious churches. While cage chantries are not an aberration of their age, nevertheless as a group they illustrate a flexibility both in the use of physical space and the means of founding a perpetual institution for the benefit of their souls after death that illuminates intercessionary institutions more generally.

What sort of building is a church porch? This question is addressed using methodologies which promote consideration of what a building can be phenomenologically as well as functionally and architecturally. A purpose of the research was to evince the various functions widely associated with porches, to identity consistencies in the nature of events conducted in porches and the involvement of architecture therein. The research discovered a strong connection between porches and burial, a traditional practice which can provide justification of the form and decoration of certain examples. Church porches were, however, used for a broad range of activities, some established and unchanging, others more fleeting. The broad range of purposes can be associated with a tension between formal developmental trajectory and architectural variety. The study is based on the church porches of medieval Norfolk and these buildings evidence this particular tension well. Those constructed before c.1350 were not conceived of as sacred places whereas by c.1400 the facades were employed in the service of the sacred and used to project religious imagery. The implication of this finding is that porches were no longer peripheral but notionally integrated with the church. The range of evidence consulted has established porches to be at least three different sorts of building: entrances which introduce the larger building beyond, facades to communicate social and doctrinal sensitivities, and protective canopies which shelter and edity those within. Not being tightly controlled in terms of form or function an array of choices was available to patrons and designers. Their direct input into the planning of the building therefore needed to be greater in this context than in most others. As the pattern was not predetermined many porches are evidence of the negotiation between people, money and materials

No description available.

Why does architectural style change? This question, once of critical concern to architectural historians, has been of peripheral interest to more recent scholarship. In re-opening the question, with the emphasis on the adoption of new motifs rather than their invention, this thesis aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the causes of change and to extend the methodological apparatus with which the question can be tackled. The empirical base for the study is a previously untapped resource: the sixty-six collegiate churches founded in the 14th century in England and Wales. The diachronic investigation of the changes in architectural motifs observed in these churches is complemented by the use of techniques drawn from other disciplines, such as population-level analysis and the use of frequency-distribution graphs. Two of the churches, Edington and St Mary’s, Warwick, neither of which have been accorded substantive academic attention before, are the subject of detailed case studies. The resulting observations enable a number of the potential causes of 14th-century architectural change to be tested: boredom with existing forms; competition; fashion; cultural and societal influences; costs and funding constraints; and the dominance of a ‘centre’. With the exception of competition, in the guise of differentiation or emulation, none exhibit convincing explanatory power. This prompts a crossdisciplinary inquiry using models of change from the social and natural sciences, specifically Innovation Diffusion Theory and the application of principles of the theory of evolution. These are evaluated against the observations from the dataset. The thesis concludes by enumerating the benefits of taking a broader, more interdisciplinary approach to the exploration of architectural change.

Buildings and architectural metaphors occupy an important place in early Christian literature. Heaven was conceived of as a city, Christ is a cornerstone, apostles and prophets are foundations and pillars, the Virgin Mary is a gateway to salvation and believers are living stones. This dissertation studies the equally inventive range of visual architectural symbolism in the art of the late Roman Empire and its successor states. Taking examples from across the Mediterranean basin, from Rome to Syria, it investigates why buildings were so often chosen for illustration and how they functioned as images, often as active protagonists within compositions. Chapter one deals with late fourth-century funerary monuments; chapter two discusses the early fifth-century apse mosaics of Roman churches; chapter three covers the mosaic floors of Syrian and Jordanian churches from the fourth to seventh centuries, and chapter four moves between the Umayyad eastern Mediterranean and Carolingian and papal Rome, to discuss the renewed enthusiasm for architectural imagery in the eighth and early ninth centuries. Buildings embodied many positive qualities, such as stability, tradition, authority, civilisation and wealth, and the open-endedness of architectural iconography enabled viewers to read multiple meanings into one image. The flexibility of architectural symbolism, the role of depicted buildings as both agents and mediators, and their effectiveness as embodiments of material splendour all contributed to the impact of architectural imagery. This dissertation shows how images of buildings were inventively deployed, especially at times of heightened social competition, as powerful expressions of institutional and religious identity and personal status.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation provides a reassessment of the design documents and historical discourse concerning Le Corbusier's Chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp. Chapter 1 provides historical background for Le Corbusier’s acceptance of the commission, and resituates the primary literature on the Chapel within its original context: a tense ideological conflict between the French Dominicans and the Vatican hierarchy, who had placed the principal patrons and their chosen architect under covert surveillance. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive review of the secondary literature on the Chapel, providing chronological evidence that Le Corbusier’s explanations of Ronchamp have exerted a predominant influence upon this discourse since the Chapel's inauguration in 1955. Chapters 3 and 4 present an exhaustive content analysis of the portion of the primary literature on Ronchamp published between 1953 and 1955, highlighting the considerable discrepancies that these texts contain. Upon the basis of this review, I suggest that there is sufficient warrant to be skeptical about the canonical explanations of the Chapel's design, which first appeared within these texts. The study concludes in Chapters 5 and 6 with a renewed investigation of the extant archival materials pertaining to the initial phases of Le Corbusier’s design work for the Chapel. I argue that the canonical explanations of Ronchamp have overlooked many early drawings that played a fundamental role in the architect's creative process, and, on the basis of these discoveries, propose a revised sequence of design development for the first three phases of work within the atelier. An alternate explanation of Le Corbusier's creative process is also proposed, based upon a revolutionary approach to architectural design that he developed after the war, which, I suggest, he did not wish to disclose to his professional peers or to the public.

The church of Santo Spirito in Florence is universally accepted as one of the architectural works of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). It is nevertheless surprising that contrary to such buildings as San Lorenzo or the Old Sacristy, the church has received relatively little scholarly attention. Most scholarship continues to rely upon the testimony of Brunelleschi’s earliest biographer, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, to establish an administrative and artistic initiation date for the project in the middle of Brunelleschi’s career, around 1428. Through an exhaustive analysis of the biographer’s account, and subsequent comparison to the extant documentary evidence from the period, I have been able to establish that construction actually began at a considerably later date, around 1440. It is specifically during the two and half decades after Brunelleschi’s death in 1446 that very little is known about the proceedings of the project. A largely unpublished archival source which records the machinations of the Opera (works committee) of Santo Spirito from 1446-1461, sheds considerable light on the progress of construction during this period, as well as on the role of the Opera in the realization of the church. In addition to collecting outstanding debts, the Opera also began to sell the rights of patronage over many of the church’s crossing chapels. The patrons of these chapels were members of the city’s republican elite. Much of the quarter’s social hierarchy is manifest in the church by the quantity of chapels owned by single families, rather than by chapel location. This is because Brunelleschi’s “centralized basilica” plan made traditional altar proximity less exclusive. Moreover, chapel patrons were surprisingly almost all exclusively residents of only three of the quarter’s four gonfaloni. The controversies concerning the completion of the church between 1471 and 1487, including the construction of an enclosing wall around Brunelleschi’s intended extruding semi-circular chapels, the hypothesis of barrel vaulting over the church, and the debate over the number of façade doors, suggest a general uncertainty about the architect’s original plan. My research into this post-Brunelleschian history of Santo Spirito focuses on the role of the cantiere (work site) as heir to Brunelleschi’s architectural inheritance; this also provides a means by which to insert the church into the wider context of the building tradition of fifteenth-century Florence. Like most cantieri of the time, the one at Santo Spirito was quite fluid in structure, with a panoply of laborers and suppliers providing the building site with various services and materials. The significant amount of unpublished documentation presented in this thesis concerning the cantiere also provides a succinct case study of the finances of ecclesiastical construction, and a revealing comparative analysis of the building costs of labor and materials at Santo Spirito in relation to other fifteenth-century building projects in Florence such as the hospitals of San Paolo and the Innocenti, as well as the Strozzi Palace.

Entre 1600 et 1790, de très nombreuses églises paroissiales nouvelles ont été bâties dans le diocèse d’Elne. Ces édifices, répartis dans toutes les zones géographiques du territoire, montrent une diversité architecturale particulièrement marquée, parfois loin des modèles suivis dans les grands centres. Territoire frontalier, le Roussillon, dont la division ecclésiastique principale est le diocèse d’Elne, a connu une histoire riche et de multiples influences artistiques, lesquelles sont visibles dans l’architecture des églises paroissiales bâties aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Cette étude recense toutes les églises paroissiales bâties durant cette période dans le diocèse, en retraçant le contexte de leur (re-)construction, en identifiant les maîtres d’œuvre, et en examinant les choix esthétiques et les influences dans l’architecture de chaque édifice. Elle propose ainsi une lecture globale inédite de l’architecture sacrée en Roussillon à l’époque moderne en répondant à la question des styles architecturaux en présence, de leur spécificité et de leur rattachement aux mouvements architecturaux de la période. / Between 1600 and 1790, many new parochial churches were built in the diocese of Elne. These buildings, present in all the geographical zones of the territory, display a great architectural diversity, sometimes very far from that found in great centres. Being a frontier territory, Roussillon, of which the diocese of Elne is the main ecclesiastical division, has had a rich history and multiple artistic influences, which are visible in the architecture of the parochial churches built in the 17th and 18th centuries. The present study identifies all the parochial churches built during this period in the diocese, it retraces the context of their (re)construction, identifies the master builders, and examines the aesthetical choices and the influences in the architecture of each building. It thus proposes a new global reading of sacred architecture in Roussillon during the modern period and answers to the question of the architectural styles in presence, of their specificity and their attachment to the architectural movements of the time.