Creativity in Three Dimensions: An Investigation of the Presbytery Aisles of Wells Cathedral

Investigating forms and formwork in the nave aisles at Tewkesbury Abbey

“…As we have demonstrated previously in our studies of vault ribs (Buchanan & Webb 2017a, 2017b, 2018, 2019, digital technologies present a range of new techniques for analysing the masonry patterns and three-dimensional forms of these webs. This paper describes these analytical tools and demonstrates how they can be applied to studying the form and structure of the vaults at Tewkesbury, with a particular emphasis on how they were constructed and whether or not formwork could have been involved.…”

Digitally aided analysis of medieval vaults in an English cathedral, using generative design tools

“…For the 3D investigation, we focused on a run of five vault bays in the nave (14)(15)(16)(17)(18), which appeared to be the most consistent based on the laser scan data and were seemingly simpler as they only contain onecentred arcs. For this article, we have excluded vaults with two-centred arcs as found in bay 13 of the nave as well as most bays in the choir.…”

“…Across many of our case study sites in England, we have proposed that an ancient geometric dividing device now known as the ‘starcut’ diagram seems to have been used to aid the 2D vault design. 15–17 Once the bay size is determined, the starcut diagram is added by creating four chevrons: each connecting one corner of the bay to the opposite midpoint and back to the adjacent corner. The crossing points of these chevrons enable bays to be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sevenths, elevenths and further still, and can be used for any rectangular bay regardless of size.…”