EXERCISE: ARCHITECTURE AND ITS VOCABULARY

Two copies due Thursday, October 27 in class, but do NOT cut class to finish your paper.  (Instead turn it in within 24 hours to my mail slot, although this makes a mess of the paper exchange.)  (This is in accordance with HAVC departmental policy.)  The second copy will be exchanged with another student in the class for evaluation. (What a deal! Two evaluations for the price of one paper!)

LENGTH:   3-4 pages (i.e., about 800 words), typed, double-spaced.  Please leave a proper margin, at least on one side for comments. Include the computer word count at the top of the paper under your name.

PURPOSE:            To study the Romanesque architecture of St.-Etienne at Nevers and the abbey church of             Mont-St-Michel.

ASSIGNMENT: 

Locate Nevers (in Burgundy) and Mont-St-Michel (in Normandy) on your map (Reader, p. 19).

PART I:  In order to increase your ability to look carefully at a building, to learn necessary architectural vocabulary, and to practice expressing your thoughts, write an essay using visual analysis to discuss the nave interiors of the following two buildings:

• the nave of St.-Etienne, Nevers, a Cluniac priory, begun in c. 1083 and dedicated in 1097; refer to it as Nevers

• the south wall of the nave of Mont-St-Michel, a Benedictine abbey, begun in c. 1060; refer to it as Mont-St-Michel.  (Caution:  Do not write on the architecture of the north nave wall, for it is a twelfth-century version of the original south wall.)

            (Don't repeat this information in your paper unless you need it for your discussion.)

In writing your essay, characterize the architecture of each church both generally and as precisely and specifically as you can, and examine some of the following problems as you find them relevant to your discussion of the characterization of the architecture:

• treatment and the effects of the treatment of pier forms and vaulting shafts or wall responds (Are the    buildings bay-divided?)
• types of arches and effects of different rhythms   
• relationships of voids and solids (treatment of the wall), etc.
• stories (the horizontal divisions of the wall)
• proportions of the stories and space of the central vessel
• vaulting forms, or ceiling (Note:  The original ceiling at Mont-St-Michel was probably an open timber roof like the one at Old St. Peter's, Rome, or Sant'Apollinare in Classe).

Avoid merely making a list of elements, however; use your observations to build your discussion of the character and potential meaning(s) of the architecture. A precise analysis is also important. Analyzing is more than description: it uses description to formulate significant points.

Be sure to discuss each building in a positive light; neither is "better" than the other.  When finished, take a new sheet of paper and list your main points.  How well have you clarified them, argued them, and supported them with concrete detail?  Does your introduction make clear the main directions you are going without stating exactly what you will say? Finish the drawings of Part II before the final version of your paper as they should increase the power of your observations. Your comments should also be consistent with your drawings.

For aid in architectural vocabulary, the following are helpful:

            Pierce, From Abacus to Zeus

            Focillon, glossary in Art of the West

            John Fleming, Hugh Honour, Nikolaus Pevsner, Dictionary of Architecture.

For help in writing about architecture, read in Stalley, Bony, etc.  But a word of caution--the discussion of Mont-St-Michel by some authors is confused.  It is a triforium, not a gallery or tribune.  Nevers has a tribune. Consult a manual of style, such as Blanche Ellsworth, English Simplified, on sale and reserve. Pay attention to all the writing advice in the Reader, especially p. 6. Clear, accurate writing is expected.

ILLUSTRATIONS can be found in Kenneth J. Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800-1200, ill.45 for Nevers and ill. 361 for Mont-St-Michel (these may differ from the editions on reserve); in Howard Saalman, Medieval Architecture, pls. 87 and 70, respectively. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, illustrates Mont-St-Michel as fig. 95. These three books are on reserve. Other books illustrate the two churches as well. Good illustrations are posted in the glass case near the ND . . . books in McHenry Library, and some slides are available at the Slide Library.  Beware of using only xeroxed illustrations or other poor reproductions, including those on the course website under "Exercises; Architecture and Its Vocabulary" <http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/~goth/arth164/Exercises/exercise1.html>, from which to write your exercise; mistakes may be made because you cannot see the architectural details clearly enough.

PART II:  Sketch in simplified, but precise terms and hand in with your essay the following:

1)            a pier diagram (ground plan of a pier) for both naves (see Reader, p. 37)

2)            two bays of the elevation of each church. Advice: Draw the elevation before the section, using
the same measurements in both drawings, i.e., you can take your section heights from your elevation. It is much easier this way.

3)            a schematic transverse section of each church. It is a better learning experience to try to draw your sections from illustrations of the church itself, using the illustrated sections afterwards to guide you where you had trouble in figuring out the structure. Except for its triforium Mont-St-Michel is most like the section of Peterborough Cathedral in the Reader, p. 68. [What are the closest models for Nevers?]

Sample drawings of a two-bay elevation and transverse section of St-Etienne at Caen are illustrated of the Reader pp. 65-67 and other illustrationsthroughout, but your drawings will be more schematic than those. Just be sure to include all essential design and structural information, but there is no need to represent the masonry. Samples are posted in the exhibit in the McHenry glass case. Also, see samples of drawings in Stalley, figs. 89 and 19 (Nevers is like 89a and 89d together), but your drawings need not be so detailed as these; however, accurate relative proportions and the main elements should be made clear.  Be sure you draw the difference between a tribune and a triforium.

Finish labeling the worksheets in the Reader, pp. 36-37, for your own use.