Today, a great architect ends an era. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
Here's something to think
about: it was 1960 before any building in London
rose as high as the medieval cathedral at
Strasbourg. The Strasbourg spire rose forty stories
above the town. We made no building that high
anywhere until 100 years ago. Only by adding iron
and steel could we lift buildings any higher than
the Gothic cathedrals.
Down through the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries,
cathedrals became more and more grand. By the
mid-1200s they were a technological marvel. And the
men who made them knew it.
The 13th century mason-architect was a powerful
public figure. Once he'd simply been first among
peers. Now he walked with a swagger. In 1258 the
maker of Notre-Dame chisled his own name in a
25-foot stone. The next generation of builders were
administrators. They no longer touched stone. By
1300 the age of the Gothic cathedral had all but
ended.
Let's meet one of the last great medieval builders.
He was Villard de Honnecourt. By 1250 Villard had
worked on many famous cathedrals. He produced no
single masterpiece. But he left behind an
astonishing set of sketchbooks.
Those books reflect a dazzling array of interests.
He was an innovator. He honeycombed Reims Cathedral
with the first set of passageways. They eliminated
scaffolding for building, maintenance, and
firefighting. His passageways have been part of
cathedrals ever since.
Villard's books teem with ideas. Here's a
hand-warmer for the bishop to use at high mass.
There's the first European sketch of a
perpetual-motion machine.
Perpetual motion may seem a
poor reflection on Villard. But later he gives that
idea another twist. He suggests lasting motion of a
workable kind, when he sketches the first clock
escapement mechanism. Modern clocks rose out of
that crude sketch to change Western thinking and
Western science.
Villard traveled to less developed countries. He
exported the new architecture. He created
intellectual ferment.
Yet by 1300 his kind had grown so grand that they
killed their own greatness. They became managers of
other people's ideas. They picked the fruit without
tending the orchard. By 1300 that glorious era was
over.
And we're left to ponder our own errors. For we,
too, create a gulf between our imagination and the
clear hard stone of making and doing. And we'll pay
the same price if we don't find a way to reverse
that drift.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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