SAB13

Sean Akahane- Bryen

2013

This research arose from the observation that parametric design had a certain affinity to the relational design and building praxis of Gothic masons. The project took the form of a survey of Late Gothic vaults, mostly concentrated in Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Bohemia and dating from the 14th to the mid-16th century. These rich and formally inventive figured vaults epitomise the German Late Gothic and are the output of a sophisticated tradition of strict but immensely productive rules of modular progression and procedural geometric form-finding, applied in the absence of what Renaissance and later architects might recognise as ‘theory.’