I would just like to thank Shad for linking to this response video, and to all my new subscribers for being so kind in their comments. You can probably imagine how it's a bit overwhelming to see a tenfold increase in your subscriber count in a matter of hours, so I'm a bit ecstatic right now, but I'll try to get some new videos out there for you in the coming weeks (even though I'm quite busy with other things), and I hope you'll like them. I might have to push that video on Gothic Architecture a bit further forward in the queue as well, because I'm quite aware that's probably what a lot of you subscribed for. Again, thank you all very much; you're tremendous.
I hope not to disappoint. There was going to be a video coming out this weekend, but I had to push it back for a few days; the script is written and about half the visual assets are made, but much though I love Photoshop, after spending six or seven hours straight making them, it does get jarring, and you have to distract yourself for a bit. Hopefully I can continue with them tomorrow, and have the video out by Wednesday or Thursday.
This was truly spectacular, very well said sir! Thank you for the correction and clarification, it certainly helped clear up some of my confusion. You have a very clear, informative, and engaging way of explaining things. Great use of footage and images too. Loved the video and I can't wait to see your next video on Gothic architecture!
Found this because Shad shared this response. I'm glad for it. After seeing his original video and now your response video I feel that I can more accurately differentiate Gothic architecture from more classical architecture. I didn't even consider the possibility that you could find Gothic architecture in the Middle East. Thank you.
That is indeed something most people wouldn't be aware of. It just so happens that the later period of the Crusader states in what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan coincided with the time when Gothic was really coming into its own, so quite a lot of it was used by the Crusaders. There was a misconception some time ago that it was actually the Indo-Persian architecture used by the Islamic states surrounding the Crusaders that inspired Gothic, but that doesn't make a lot of sense, because Indo-Persian only really started to properly use pointed arches to their fullest extent later, and the first examples of Gothic can actually be found in France, not in the Middle East.
RobertExplains Wow, that is interesting. I can understand why people would have attributed Gothic style to Indo-Persian style architecture because both built tall vertical structures and used pointed arches frequently. An example comes to mind: The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, Humayun's Tomb (1560), but these were built after the examples you referenced from France. Despite the similarities though, there are clear differences in style thanks to the cultural influence. I've not come across your channel in the past. Is this video similar to your regular content? I'll check it out and I'm sure I'll be subscribing. Thank you again.
I don't really limit myself to a single subject, but most of it's about history, because that's where a lot of my interest lies. There'll be a bit of science and engineering, and given that I studied architecture for a few years, you should very much expect there to be some more architecture videos in the future, but it's largely random.
Yes, I know it says "You're may subscribe" at the end. I watch every video at least twice in their entirety before I upload them and once more after uploading, so I bloody hate it when such things slip through the gaps...
RobertExplains did you use a picture of Nidarosdom in Trondheim Norway! Because many of the picture you show look like it. And great response, you were really good at it. Mvh TronNorway
+Tron Norway - I'll take it into consideration. I certainly have a fair few opinions on Vikings and their depiction in popular media, but I might need to brush up on them a little to make a proper informative video about them that does more than just debunk some misconceptions that have already been thoroughly debunked by others (like the horned helmets or leather armour)
Here on Shads recommendation and have to say your video is very much on point though short and to me you seem like a really sincere and polite person. Keep up the good work!!
Thank you very much! I certainly try to be a sincere and polite person, but such things tend to be lifelong projects; I'm certainly not where I want to be as a person, though I'm glad some of my personality apparently came across in the video.
RobertExplains oh! There's no need to thank me, I just stated the obvious fact that I liked. Good luck to you. I hope I can enjoy your channel as much as I do Shads!
Good to hear! I'm afraid that when I was studying architecture, architectural history was given barely any attention, so most of what I know about it I've had to teach myself, but I'm happy to know it matches with people who were actually taught about it. :D
Hehe, you're not wrong. I was at 11 subscribers when I made the video, and now I'm at 382. It's all just numbers, ultimately, but it's great to know that there are actual people behind those numbers who seem to enjoy what I'm doing, and that really does motivate, not to mention that it'll help get some feedback on my videos, so I can have it pointed out to me when I am wrong, which is always good.
RobertExplains Maybe I can point something out then. Obviously the video was great, but it seems that there is some distortion in the audio. Almost seems the audio was recorded in a low bit rate or was compressed a bit. I'm sure you've already noticed. Have you looked into it?
In the case of Marienburg it was the Teutonic Order, not the Templars, but certainly the buildings left behind by chivalric orders are a great insight into civilian and military applications of Gothic architecture, mainly because over time these orders became inordinately rich, and could afford to splash out on the kind of structures like those. Krak des Chevaliers is a very fine example of that, and Marienburg is indeed another.
I plan to go into more detail about that in my future video on Gothic. It's funny though that medieval architects really don't seem to have actually understood these things at all; a lot of it was just trial and error, and they found the pointed arch to work very well, so they adapted it without really knowing what made it work so well. It was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the rise of Art Nouveau/Jügendstil, that people really started to experiment with different types of arches in a scientific way, and they found that it was actually the catenary arch that was the most effective weight-bearer of all, but a pointed arch is (depending on the angle of its point) pretty close to that, so it seems the architects of the Middle Ages accidentally found the near-perfect arch.
I think Shad is also including lots of neo-gothic examples base on Tudor style, which is itself kind of neo-gothic style implemented in renaissance England. His videos are probably more informative for people from the new worlds where they cannot see these historical buildings in person and can see their modern renditions only. For example the Disney castle looks somehow odd to European (I would call it Las Vegas style). The reason is that if you grow up with these old buildings you will get feeling of its construction traits - the lightness and heaviness depending on the materials and the engineering knowledge of the time. And then when someone builds/designs something similar lacking these construction traits it seems odd, therefore. I think people in Europe have better innate feeling what is gothic, what is an old castle(Burg), what is a new castle (Shloss) and what is complete fantasy (without need of deeper understanding). Still I'm watching Shad's videos beacuse of the enthusiasm and energy he is putting in his work:-)
I have a Masters of Architecture and did my thesis specifically on Gothic Architecture. I'm going to have to disagree with you on your interpretation of pointed arches. Concerning material technology, architecture is broken into 3 major phases: timber, masonry, and steel. Gothic architecture is nothing more than load-bearing masonry construction, but what makes it distinctive is how thin the walls are. Across the entire history of load-bearing masonry construction for non-defensive buildings, the goal was always to use as little stone as possible and get the walls as thin as possible. The difference in Europe that made gothic construction possible was not the pointed arch (that had been known and understood since antiquity) but rather it was all the wood they had. The northern Europeans had enough cheap wood available to build elaborate scaffoldings that could hold many many many stones in place in isolation without collapsing under their own weight and thus could make more complicated arches (like tri-foils and quad-foils) and also make thinner walls. That alone is what defines the gothic style of load-bearing masonry architecture. Look at other places that are heavily forested, like India, and you'll find similarly exotic arches and thin walls despite that culture having almost no interactions with medieval Europe. Pointed arches weren't the driving cause for gothic construction, quite the opposite, they were a resulting necessity. As you said, rounded arches have too much lateral load. Once medieval builders had the ability to construct their thin walls they had no choice but to then use pointed arches because rounded arches would push their thins walls over. We see the development of butresses and flying butresses first being built as emergency add-ons as reactions to outter walls cracking, and then they're later purposely used to achieve the goal of having ROUNDED arches on the inside. Look at the ceiling of halls with flying butresses and you'll find significantly shallower pointed arches compared to non-flying butress couterparts. Catholic churches in particular always had interests in being more "roman" and symbolically valued rounded arches more than pointed arches. It's not a coincidence that once stronger materials became available Catholic churches started using all round arches again because they could finally get their material minimalism within their preferered stylistic language. In fact, by several records, pointed arches were seen as crude compared the geometrical ideal circle, and many Gothic buildings were torn down specifically because of the disgrace of their oddly shapend and imperfect pointed arches. So in conclusion, you're wrong that pointed arches are the defining characteristic of gothic architecture. People wanted to build with less stone and pointed arches were an unhappy compromise towards that goal. Edit. And that last fortress you showed isn't using pointed arches, those are corbel arches which are common in fortress walls because they require NO scaffolding to be built and have no vulnerable key stones. There's nothing stylistic or aesthetic about them.
I'd disagree about the preference for round arches; they are quite often used for decorative purposes on Gothic buildings, but structural arches are very, very rarely round, unless we're talking about buildings that were started in Romanesque and finished in Gothic. You're certainly correct that in the later period of Gothic, architects started to deviate from using simple pointed arches, but rather than going to round arches, they started to experiment with arches that were stylistically similar to the pointed arch, but structurally different, like the four-centred arch. As for your point that the pointed arches of Gothic were there just to reduce the amount of stone needed, I would like to raise the issue of Brick Gothic in Central Europe, because bricks were cheap and readily available unlike hewed blocks of stone, and yet these buildings show very little tendency to deviate from the pointed arch.
All that said, you do raise some interesting points. Is there any chance you could provide me with a copy of your thesis? It'd be an interesting read in preparation for my coming video on Gothic.
Is there a difference between gothic architecture/ engineering versus style though? I mean, those last castles didn’t look gothic so why wouldn’t we distinguish them from gothic-looking styles? Also, the arches didn’t seem as pointed to me, but they were kinda in disrepair so hard to tell. Good video though.
+Geordin Soucie - Quite correct, and we could do with a better sub-categorisation of Gothic architecture. As it stands, we do have several terms to describe different stylistic evolutions within Gothic (like Rayonnant Gothic, Flamboyant Gothic and Perpendicular Gothic), and there are certainly distinct French, German and English styles of Gothic that are typically seen as subcategories, not to mention Brick Gothic, which is a whole other thing again. Most of these styles only really apply to more highly stylised Gothic buildings though. There was a point in the video where I showed an exerpt from the Wikipedia page on Gothic that said something like "therefore, a study of Gothic is largely a study of churches", and sadly, the people making these subcategorisations (most of whom lived in the 18th and 19th centuries) didn't really look beyond churches.
One thing many people get wrong about so-called gothic architecture is that what they identify as examples are often build *after the middle ages.* A lot of it had its peak during the Renaissance and some gothic churches were only completed in the freaking 19th century! Some buildings started off with round arches and we're never completed, partially demolished and rebuilt as gothic buildings 400 years after laying their fundations!
People should not forget, that these buildings were not planned to be finished ASAP, but the process on its own was already an act of worship of god. When pointed arches were available and glass mass produced, there was a competition between cities and cloisters for who built the highest church. However, many churches were never finished. Some collapsed, some got their roof blown off by the first storm, some developed cracks in the walls or started to sink in the ground. It took a lot of trial and error until they figured out how to find a suitable ground, lay an appropriate foundation and design the church in a manner that the weight distribution actually works. Moreover, they had to make sure that the wind doesn't pull down the wooden roofs or breaks the glass windows. Thus many churches were abandoned in their building process. Partially, because the builders ran out of money, and partially because they ran out of ideas on how to tackle all these problems. Sometimes it took a century after a church was abandoned construction ruin until they tried to finish it. In some cases it were even several such cycles so that they finished only two eras later... Some of the more recent gothic churches have some clever modifications based on concrete or steel-rings, helping them to distribute the weight better and prevent sinking in...
Gothic architecture was also shaped by the theology of the time. Light was seen as an important element in religion then, which is why there was a push for larger windows to let in more light. It is totally possible to have a gothic-style building with small windows, and nothing forces the windows to be as large as they normally are in Gothic churches.
Absolutely. But because Gothic architecture allows for it, I think it's entirely understandable that people started to experiment with very large glass surfaces. The very early Gothic buildings didn't make full use of this yet, and it's only by the time the Rayonnant style of Gothic comes around, over a century after the first Gothic buildings, that architects really started to emphasise increasingly large windows.
This was indeed highly informative, thanks! The quality of your video editing was also very good. However you may wish to invest in some higher quality audio equipment. No offense but you sound very tinny and somehow simultaneously too loud and too quiet at the same time.
Great video. Very informative and well made. I like your stile and your taste in architecture. Looking forward to your next video ^^ Have a good day Sir. :D
Taste, eh? Does that mean I'm talking to another person who loves the Sainte-Chapelle? :D Thank you very much for your kind comments, and a very good day to you as well.
Your tribute is very much accepted! I'm a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tribute Shad's viewers brought to my channel, but I'll very much endeavour not to disappoint them.
I hope it does not become to much pressure on you. The most important thing is staying true to yourself and your content. I hope this proves to be your breakthrough. Don't squander the moment! ;) Just keep on feeding me trivia and I'll be happy. I loved the Hansa video.
+Elderon - Thank you very much! Glad you liked it. And yes, even though I am a bit ecstatic about the sudden increase of attention to my channel right now, I'm generally quite a level-headed person, so I certainly don't intend to ride the popularity train (if there even is such a thing) to the point where my content becomes bland and undiscernable from others just for the sake of pandering to audiences and gathering views. That's not really my way of going about things, and I'd be royally ashamed of myself if I ever went that road.
The pointed arch and the buttresses that made possible some (thinner?) Walls And way more window space giving space to l'art du vitrail plombé (sorry I do not know how to translate thid to english properly) remembering that the whole goal pf gothic ecclesiatical design is to ELEVATE a prayer to God in the form of a cathedral) also the technical developpments allowed for what I call stone storytelling, wich, in a mostly not litterate medieval europe, was very important in order to educate the masses into the whole catholic gospel blah blah, hence añl thos sculptural.groupings and figures like say Chartres. (That one and Saint Eustache, and the Sainte Chappelle) yeah I am a fan who also have been lucky enough to see those buildings in reality.
Understandable. It's a work-in-progress still. Oh, if this really did nearly kill you, I highly recommend you don't watch my video "A Brief History of the Caribbean", because I used a different audio setup there, and the audio quality really was truly diabolically bad.
Wait, you're Dutch!?!? Your English is extremely good for a Dutch person! I didn't even recognize any Dutch accent! En dat terwijl ik zelf een Nederlander ben!
Hehe, ik heb er meer dan tien jaar over gedaan om elk laatst overblijfsel van m'n Nederlands accent te verliezen, en ik ben nog steeds niet 100% tevreden. Helpt trouwens ook dat ik bijna altijd in het Engels denk, en dat ik zoveel op het internet zit dat ik iig meer Engels dan Nederlands lees en schrijf, al is het nog steeds meer Nederlands als het op echt spreken tegen andere mensen aankomt.
Ventrue Inc. I don't know why, but the Dutch I've met are the best English speakers of Europe, right after native English speakers. I wonder why. German accent sounds horrible, Austrian is a bit softer and easier to overlook. French and Spanish speakers might have a cute accent, but for the most part their English is far worse than those of German speakers, Portuguese or Romanians...
I bet you never heard our Dutch prime minister or other government officials speak English. Their accent is *very* noticeable - and to me - extremely jarring. But yes, on occasion, you'll find someone like Robert who's English is so proper that even fellow Dutchmen like myself don't recognize the accent!
Do Dutch have dubbed or subbed TV? Portuguese are far better in English than Spanish, because they watch a lot subbed rather than dubbed. I'm Austrian BTW and got a noticeable accent, but I haven't met anyone that could identify me as a native German speaker. People always expect that one German accent.
En dat terwijl ik zelf een Nederlander ben! -> Well that makes you less good of a judge because if you share the same native language you are more likly to overhear accents because you are far more used to that sound then natives of other countries. But yes Roberts english is really good, but on the other hand he doesnt have this typical british, american or australian english accent (or in that case dialect) which makes him more likely to be not a native.
But wait, the pointed arch was lifted from Islamic architecture, was it not? Would that make Islamic architecture gothic as well (assuming I'm correct)?
It was assumed for a long time that the Gothic pointed arch must have been derived from the pointed arches in Islamic architecture (particularly Persian architecture, where they had been prominent since late antiquity), but current evidence seems to suggest it was more of a parallel development. That said, seeing as Abbot Suger constructed the first Gothic building after the First Crusade (not that long after, but long enough), it is possible that stories of pointed arches reached St. Denis from returning Crusaders and that was the inspiration. We simply won't know. The way pointed arches are employed in Gothic and Islamic architecture is rather different though, which does support the idea that insofar as one did influence the other, it would have been through loose descriptions by people who didn't have a deep understanding of architecture and structural engineering (which seems a weird term to use for the 12th century, but you know what I mean), not by Europeans directly copying parts of Islamic architecture. A lot of copying did happen during the period the Crusader states existed, and this exchange of ideas went both ways, but insofar as we now know, it seems unlikely that the Gothic pointed arch was such a case.
You'd think that was the issue, and yet I'm using a Behringer B-1, which is a pretty good little thing, so the problem is elsewhere in the audio pipeline. Still working on it...
Just sharing something I learnt from my own experience. A good mic can still produce bad quality recording if the recording Hz is set too low, which they are by default. Might be worth checking - Control panel - sound - microphone properties - advanced, and the check the default format. Mine is set at 1 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (studio quality). If you're already set at a high quality recording rate it must be something else.
It'd be nice to have a lot of people viewing my videos, hopefully learning from them, and also correcting them where I'm wrong, certainly. 256000 seems a very daunting number right now, but who knows it might go there. I'm not really the kind of person who makes these videos in search of popularity or fame; it's more a way to vent the endless amount of trivia and modest amount of actual knowledge I've got stored up in my brain.
+Isaiah OConnor - I'd need 4000 watch-hours as well (I'm currently at 360 or something) and to maintain that on an annual basis. I suppose that if growth continues, 1000 subs and 4000 watch-hours is an achievable goal, but as I said, I don't really care that much about popularity or fame, and while it might be nice to get paid a little for making these videos, I won't automatically flip the switch when I cross that threshold; I'll first want to have a good internal debate about the merits of an extra income stream (which will be very small initially) when it means pushing ads to my viewers. Don't know what I'll decide on yet, don't know if I'll soon reach the point where that decision will need to be made, but should it come to that, I'll handle it then and there. For now, I'm busy with my next video. Just finished the script, and I'll probably start creating the visual assets tomorrow, in the hope I'll be able to release the video somewhere during the weekend.
And I'm subscriber 809 lol I don't remember my spot in line for I am shad only that I found him through his first ever castle video Wich was 4 hours old when I found it and subbed. I had spent years searching Google for blueprints or floorplans of castles and got nothing so I finally tried RUclips and there second or third from the top was ruclips.net/video/ZBn7f3H-eqM/видео.html Names and terms of a midevil Castles parts, FINALLY I found something on castles, I was 30 at the time and had been trying to find this info sense highschool but I stink at searching online thus no knowledge. At the time I was trying to make a large castle in Minecraft and build with the land on this massive piller of stone topped with dirt and nearly large enough for the entirety of honor guard zwinger and all and I was getting fed up with my ineptitude and finally tried RUclips. Never did finish that castle but at least I got a hell of a floorplan played out and got the wall and part of the great hall and stables built.
I would just like to thank Shad for linking to this response video, and to all my new subscribers for being so kind in their comments. You can probably imagine how it's a bit overwhelming to see a tenfold increase in your subscriber count in a matter of hours, so I'm a bit ecstatic right now, but I'll try to get some new videos out there for you in the coming weeks (even though I'm quite busy with other things), and I hope you'll like them. I might have to push that video on Gothic Architecture a bit further forward in the queue as well, because I'm quite aware that's probably what a lot of you subscribed for. Again, thank you all very much; you're tremendous.
Dropping a sub to see where you go liking it so far
I hope not to disappoint. There was going to be a video coming out this weekend, but I had to push it back for a few days; the script is written and about half the visual assets are made, but much though I love Photoshop, after spending six or seven hours straight making them, it does get jarring, and you have to distract yourself for a bit. Hopefully I can continue with them tomorrow, and have the video out by Wednesday or Thursday.
Usual fair or usual fare? (English as 2nd language on my side, so the question is genuine).
This was truly spectacular, very well said sir! Thank you for the correction and clarification, it certainly helped clear up some of my confusion. You have a very clear, informative, and engaging way of explaining things. Great use of footage and images too. Loved the video and I can't wait to see your next video on Gothic architecture!
Shadiversity hey good that you take it so good.
And please make a video about Vikings.
And the picture that were used look like Nidarosdom In Norway. But that's a church.
Shadiversity aye it was. Very good indeed, so I subscribed. Thanks for the recommendation 👍
Thanks, Shad! I was hoping you'd appreciate it, and I'm very glad you did.
Found this because Shad shared this response. I'm glad for it. After seeing his original video and now your response video I feel that I can more accurately differentiate Gothic architecture from more classical architecture. I didn't even consider the possibility that you could find Gothic architecture in the Middle East. Thank you.
That is indeed something most people wouldn't be aware of. It just so happens that the later period of the Crusader states in what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan coincided with the time when Gothic was really coming into its own, so quite a lot of it was used by the Crusaders. There was a misconception some time ago that it was actually the Indo-Persian architecture used by the Islamic states surrounding the Crusaders that inspired Gothic, but that doesn't make a lot of sense, because Indo-Persian only really started to properly use pointed arches to their fullest extent later, and the first examples of Gothic can actually be found in France, not in the Middle East.
RobertExplains
Wow, that is interesting. I can understand why people would have attributed Gothic style to Indo-Persian style architecture because both built tall vertical structures and used pointed arches frequently. An example comes to mind: The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, Humayun's Tomb (1560), but these were built after the examples you referenced from France. Despite the similarities though, there are clear differences in style thanks to the cultural influence.
I've not come across your channel in the past. Is this video similar to your regular content? I'll check it out and I'm sure I'll be subscribing. Thank you again.
I don't really limit myself to a single subject, but most of it's about history, because that's where a lot of my interest lies. There'll be a bit of science and engineering, and given that I studied architecture for a few years, you should very much expect there to be some more architecture videos in the future, but it's largely random.
Thanks Robert. I look forward to seeing more of your content.
Yes, I know it says "You're may subscribe" at the end. I watch every video at least twice in their entirety before I upload them and once more after uploading, so I bloody hate it when such things slip through the gaps...
RobertExplains did you use a picture of Nidarosdom in Trondheim Norway! Because many of the picture you show look like it. And great response, you were really good at it.
Mvh TronNorway
RobertExplains make a video about Vikings please. That voice is so cool.
+Tron Norway - I'll take it into consideration. I certainly have a fair few opinions on Vikings and their depiction in popular media, but I might need to brush up on them a little to make a proper informative video about them that does more than just debunk some misconceptions that have already been thoroughly debunked by others (like the horned helmets or leather armour)
You said you're from the Benelux. Does that mean Be or Nl? I myself am from the Dutch Brabant, so quite close either way.
RobertExplains Thank you for the response. I hope you have a great day.
Thank you Shad for the recommendation, thank you Robert for the explanation. Subbed.
Thanks, Anna!
Here on Shads recommendation and have to say your video is very much on point though short and to me you seem like a really sincere and polite person. Keep up the good work!!
Thank you very much! I certainly try to be a sincere and polite person, but such things tend to be lifelong projects; I'm certainly not where I want to be as a person, though I'm glad some of my personality apparently came across in the video.
RobertExplains oh! There's no need to thank me, I just stated the obvious fact that I liked. Good luck to you. I hope I can enjoy your channel as much as I do Shads!
Well, I appreciate feedback on my work, so I think that in itself warrants a thankyou. :D
I came here from Shad, but I’m staying for the soothing voice. I’m absolutely going to watch more of your videos
Mission Accomplished, Robert, enjoyed immensely your educating us on Gothic/Pointed Arch architecture! +Subscribed.
Thank you very much! I was hoping it would be educational, but if it was also enjoyable, I overshot my own targets. :p
Came here because of shads repost, seems like a good channel, hope it grows
You did a very good job explaining the pointed arches. Just like i learned in architecture history class.
Good to hear! I'm afraid that when I was studying architecture, architectural history was given barely any attention, so most of what I know about it I've had to teach myself, but I'm happy to know it matches with people who were actually taught about it. :D
I love when RUclipsrs cultivate a community of constructive criticism and informative discussion. Great response.
Thank you! Absolutely agreed; constructive criticism is crucial for those looking to actually be educational.
Wow! I watched you go from 70- over 380 subscribers in just a few days. It's pretty great!
Hehe, you're not wrong. I was at 11 subscribers when I made the video, and now I'm at 382. It's all just numbers, ultimately, but it's great to know that there are actual people behind those numbers who seem to enjoy what I'm doing, and that really does motivate, not to mention that it'll help get some feedback on my videos, so I can have it pointed out to me when I am wrong, which is always good.
RobertExplains
Maybe I can point something out then. Obviously the video was great, but it seems that there is some distortion in the audio. Almost seems the audio was recorded in a low bit rate or was compressed a bit. I'm sure you've already noticed. Have you looked into it?
Yeah, the audio is very much a work in progress. I knew absolutely bugger all about audio before I started this channel, so I'm learning as I go on.
Excellent response! I look forward to seeing more from you in the future.
Thank you very much! I'll try not to disappoint.
You have gained a new sub sir. Great vid I realy enjoyed it.
For anyone who was wondering how to make a proper responce video, this is it, and I'm only 42 seconds in.
A wonderful video explaining the world to me. Thanks for the response to shad and I hope to see more.
What a great, enlightening video! Thanks for that!
Thanks!
Great video all I have a problem with is the sound quality
Still working on that. If you have any tips, feel free to leave them.
You managed to de/confuse me like a 5 to 10%, which is not a small feat after the mess Shads video left in my head. Thank you.
Marienbrug/Malbork castle (German order HQ) in Poland is also a nice example. Templar architecture is inbetween Church and secular architecture.
In the case of Marienburg it was the Teutonic Order, not the Templars, but certainly the buildings left behind by chivalric orders are a great insight into civilian and military applications of Gothic architecture, mainly because over time these orders became inordinately rich, and could afford to splash out on the kind of structures like those. Krak des Chevaliers is a very fine example of that, and Marienburg is indeed another.
Question do you know the / can you make a video on the evolution of the arch , timeline of the advancement in understanding the forces acting them?
I plan to go into more detail about that in my future video on Gothic. It's funny though that medieval architects really don't seem to have actually understood these things at all; a lot of it was just trial and error, and they found the pointed arch to work very well, so they adapted it without really knowing what made it work so well. It was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the rise of Art Nouveau/Jügendstil, that people really started to experiment with different types of arches in a scientific way, and they found that it was actually the catenary arch that was the most effective weight-bearer of all, but a pointed arch is (depending on the angle of its point) pretty close to that, so it seems the architects of the Middle Ages accidentally found the near-perfect arch.
Fantastic video. Thanks! (And thanks to Shad for recommending it!)
I think Shad is also including lots of neo-gothic examples base on Tudor style, which is itself kind of neo-gothic style implemented in renaissance England. His videos are probably more informative for people from the new worlds where they cannot see these historical buildings in person and can see their modern renditions only. For example the Disney castle looks somehow odd to European (I would call it Las Vegas style). The reason is that if you grow up with these old buildings you will get feeling of its construction traits - the lightness and heaviness depending on the materials and the engineering knowledge of the time. And then when someone builds/designs something similar lacking these construction traits it seems odd, therefore. I think people in Europe have better innate feeling what is gothic, what is an old castle(Burg), what is a new castle (Shloss) and what is complete fantasy (without need of deeper understanding).
Still I'm watching Shad's videos beacuse of the enthusiasm and energy he is putting in his work:-)
The term you're looking for is stress dispertion, but yeah, you're definitely correct.
Thank you! Jargon's never been my strong point, but I'll make sure to use that term in future videos. :D
I have a Masters of Architecture and did my thesis specifically on Gothic Architecture. I'm going to have to disagree with you on your interpretation of pointed arches. Concerning material technology, architecture is broken into 3 major phases: timber, masonry, and steel. Gothic architecture is nothing more than load-bearing masonry construction, but what makes it distinctive is how thin the walls are. Across the entire history of load-bearing masonry construction for non-defensive buildings, the goal was always to use as little stone as possible and get the walls as thin as possible. The difference in Europe that made gothic construction possible was not the pointed arch (that had been known and understood since antiquity) but rather it was all the wood they had. The northern Europeans had enough cheap wood available to build elaborate scaffoldings that could hold many many many stones in place in isolation without collapsing under their own weight and thus could make more complicated arches (like tri-foils and quad-foils) and also make thinner walls. That alone is what defines the gothic style of load-bearing masonry architecture. Look at other places that are heavily forested, like India, and you'll find similarly exotic arches and thin walls despite that culture having almost no interactions with medieval Europe. Pointed arches weren't the driving cause for gothic construction, quite the opposite, they were a resulting necessity. As you said, rounded arches have too much lateral load. Once medieval builders had the ability to construct their thin walls they had no choice but to then use pointed arches because rounded arches would push their thins walls over. We see the development of butresses and flying butresses first being built as emergency add-ons as reactions to outter walls cracking, and then they're later purposely used to achieve the goal of having ROUNDED arches on the inside. Look at the ceiling of halls with flying butresses and you'll find significantly shallower pointed arches compared to non-flying butress couterparts. Catholic churches in particular always had interests in being more "roman" and symbolically valued rounded arches more than pointed arches. It's not a coincidence that once stronger materials became available Catholic churches started using all round arches again because they could finally get their material minimalism within their preferered stylistic language. In fact, by several records, pointed arches were seen as crude compared the geometrical ideal circle, and many Gothic buildings were torn down specifically because of the disgrace of their oddly shapend and imperfect pointed arches.
So in conclusion, you're wrong that pointed arches are the defining characteristic of gothic architecture. People wanted to build with less stone and pointed arches were an unhappy compromise towards that goal.
Edit. And that last fortress you showed isn't using pointed arches, those are corbel arches which are common in fortress walls because they require NO scaffolding to be built and have no vulnerable key stones. There's nothing stylistic or aesthetic about them.
I'd disagree about the preference for round arches; they are quite often used for decorative purposes on Gothic buildings, but structural arches are very, very rarely round, unless we're talking about buildings that were started in Romanesque and finished in Gothic. You're certainly correct that in the later period of Gothic, architects started to deviate from using simple pointed arches, but rather than going to round arches, they started to experiment with arches that were stylistically similar to the pointed arch, but structurally different, like the four-centred arch. As for your point that the pointed arches of Gothic were there just to reduce the amount of stone needed, I would like to raise the issue of Brick Gothic in Central Europe, because bricks were cheap and readily available unlike hewed blocks of stone, and yet these buildings show very little tendency to deviate from the pointed arch.
All that said, you do raise some interesting points. Is there any chance you could provide me with a copy of your thesis? It'd be an interesting read in preparation for my coming video on Gothic.
I love both you and Shad for this. Maybe you two should make a collab video, maybe eventually try to get the Metatron in it as well?
You're throwing me in with some pretty big names, Mike... I love Shad's and Metatron's videos both, but let's not run before we can walk, eh?
RobertExplains I have faith in you to get that done in the near future.
Very interesting video thanks for the information
Well explained.
Thank you!
Is there a difference between gothic architecture/ engineering versus style though?
I mean, those last castles didn’t look gothic so why wouldn’t we distinguish them from gothic-looking styles?
Also, the arches didn’t seem as pointed to me, but they were kinda in disrepair so hard to tell.
Good video though.
+Geordin Soucie - Quite correct, and we could do with a better sub-categorisation of Gothic architecture. As it stands, we do have several terms to describe different stylistic evolutions within Gothic (like Rayonnant Gothic, Flamboyant Gothic and Perpendicular Gothic), and there are certainly distinct French, German and English styles of Gothic that are typically seen as subcategories, not to mention Brick Gothic, which is a whole other thing again. Most of these styles only really apply to more highly stylised Gothic buildings though. There was a point in the video where I showed an exerpt from the Wikipedia page on Gothic that said something like "therefore, a study of Gothic is largely a study of churches", and sadly, the people making these subcategorisations (most of whom lived in the 18th and 19th centuries) didn't really look beyond churches.
One thing many people get wrong about so-called gothic architecture is that what they identify as examples are often build *after the middle ages.* A lot of it had its peak during the Renaissance and some gothic churches were only completed in the freaking 19th century!
Some buildings started off with round arches and we're never completed, partially demolished and rebuilt as gothic buildings 400 years after laying their fundations!
People should not forget, that these buildings were not planned to be finished ASAP, but the process on its own was already an act of worship of god. When pointed arches were available and glass mass produced, there was a competition between cities and cloisters for who built the highest church. However, many churches were never finished. Some collapsed, some got their roof blown off by the first storm, some developed cracks in the walls or started to sink in the ground. It took a lot of trial and error until they figured out how to find a suitable ground, lay an appropriate foundation and design the church in a manner that the weight distribution actually works. Moreover, they had to make sure that the wind doesn't pull down the wooden roofs or breaks the glass windows. Thus many churches were abandoned in their building process. Partially, because the builders ran out of money, and partially because they ran out of ideas on how to tackle all these problems. Sometimes it took a century after a church was abandoned construction ruin until they tried to finish it. In some cases it were even several such cycles so that they finished only two eras later...
Some of the more recent gothic churches have some clever modifications based on concrete or steel-rings, helping them to distribute the weight better and prevent sinking in...
Great video. You gained a new sub
Thank you very much!
RobertExplains samezies
Gothic architecture was also shaped by the theology of the time. Light was seen as an important element in religion then, which is why there was a push for larger windows to let in more light. It is totally possible to have a gothic-style building with small windows, and nothing forces the windows to be as large as they normally are in Gothic churches.
Absolutely. But because Gothic architecture allows for it, I think it's entirely understandable that people started to experiment with very large glass surfaces. The very early Gothic buildings didn't make full use of this yet, and it's only by the time the Rayonnant style of Gothic comes around, over a century after the first Gothic buildings, that architects really started to emphasise increasingly large windows.
This was indeed highly informative, thanks! The quality of your video editing was also very good. However you may wish to invest in some higher quality audio equipment. No offense but you sound very tinny and somehow simultaneously too loud and too quiet at the same time.
Great video. Very informative and well made. I like your stile and your taste in architecture. Looking forward to your next video ^^ Have a good day Sir. :D
Taste, eh? Does that mean I'm talking to another person who loves the Sainte-Chapelle? :D Thank you very much for your kind comments, and a very good day to you as well.
Guilty as charged. :)
Boy our mic is shit.
But the video is pretty good
Shad shared, so here I am to offer up my subscription as tribute.
Elderon Me too 😋
Your tribute is very much accepted! I'm a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tribute Shad's viewers brought to my channel, but I'll very much endeavour not to disappoint them.
I hope it does not become to much pressure on you. The most important thing is staying true to yourself and your content. I hope this proves to be your breakthrough. Don't squander the moment! ;)
Just keep on feeding me trivia and I'll be happy. I loved the Hansa video.
+Elderon - Thank you very much! Glad you liked it. And yes, even though I am a bit ecstatic about the sudden increase of attention to my channel right now, I'm generally quite a level-headed person, so I certainly don't intend to ride the popularity train (if there even is such a thing) to the point where my content becomes bland and undiscernable from others just for the sake of pandering to audiences and gathering views. That's not really my way of going about things, and I'd be royally ashamed of myself if I ever went that road.
Good Stuff
Thank you, sir!
The pointed arch and the buttresses that made possible some (thinner?) Walls And way more window space giving space to l'art du vitrail plombé (sorry I do not know how to translate thid to english properly) remembering that the whole goal pf gothic ecclesiatical design is to ELEVATE a prayer to God in the form of a cathedral) also the technical developpments allowed for what I call stone storytelling, wich, in a mostly not litterate medieval europe, was very important in order to educate the masses into the whole catholic gospel blah blah, hence añl thos sculptural.groupings and figures like say Chartres. (That one and Saint Eustache, and the Sainte Chappelle) yeah I am a fan who also have been lucky enough to see those buildings in reality.
Good video but dear lord the sound is killing me.
Understandable. It's a work-in-progress still. Oh, if this really did nearly kill you, I highly recommend you don't watch my video "A Brief History of the Caribbean", because I used a different audio setup there, and the audio quality really was truly diabolically bad.
Wait, you're Dutch!?!? Your English is extremely good for a Dutch person! I didn't even recognize any Dutch accent! En dat terwijl ik zelf een Nederlander ben!
Hehe, ik heb er meer dan tien jaar over gedaan om elk laatst overblijfsel van m'n Nederlands accent te verliezen, en ik ben nog steeds niet 100% tevreden. Helpt trouwens ook dat ik bijna altijd in het Engels denk, en dat ik zoveel op het internet zit dat ik iig meer Engels dan Nederlands lees en schrijf, al is het nog steeds meer Nederlands als het op echt spreken tegen andere mensen aankomt.
Ventrue Inc. I don't know why, but the Dutch I've met are the best English speakers of Europe, right after native English speakers. I wonder why.
German accent sounds horrible, Austrian is a bit softer and easier to overlook. French and Spanish speakers might have a cute accent, but for the most part their English is far worse than those of German speakers, Portuguese or Romanians...
I bet you never heard our Dutch prime minister or other government officials speak English. Their accent is *very* noticeable - and to me - extremely jarring.
But yes, on occasion, you'll find someone like Robert who's English is so proper that even fellow Dutchmen like myself don't recognize the accent!
Do Dutch have dubbed or subbed TV? Portuguese are far better in English than Spanish, because they watch a lot subbed rather than dubbed.
I'm Austrian BTW and got a noticeable accent, but I haven't met anyone that could identify me as a native German speaker. People always expect that one German accent.
En dat terwijl ik zelf een Nederlander ben! -> Well that makes you less good of a judge because if you share the same native language you are more likly to overhear accents because you are far more used to that sound then natives of other countries. But yes Roberts english is really good, but on the other hand he doesnt have this typical british, american or australian english accent (or in that case dialect) which makes him more likely to be not a native.
Shad sent me and now I'm staying
The pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress predate Gothic architecture.
But wait, the pointed arch was lifted from Islamic architecture, was it not? Would that make Islamic architecture gothic as well (assuming I'm correct)?
It was assumed for a long time that the Gothic pointed arch must have been derived from the pointed arches in Islamic architecture (particularly Persian architecture, where they had been prominent since late antiquity), but current evidence seems to suggest it was more of a parallel development. That said, seeing as Abbot Suger constructed the first Gothic building after the First Crusade (not that long after, but long enough), it is possible that stories of pointed arches reached St. Denis from returning Crusaders and that was the inspiration. We simply won't know.
The way pointed arches are employed in Gothic and Islamic architecture is rather different though, which does support the idea that insofar as one did influence the other, it would have been through loose descriptions by people who didn't have a deep understanding of architecture and structural engineering (which seems a weird term to use for the 12th century, but you know what I mean), not by Europeans directly copying parts of Islamic architecture. A lot of copying did happen during the period the Crusader states existed, and this exchange of ideas went both ways, but insofar as we now know, it seems unlikely that the Gothic pointed arch was such a case.
@@RobertExplains hmm. Thanks for the response.
Im here for Anything with even a vague hint of diminution to Shad Diversity, lol
I would recommend you get a mic instead of a potato
You'd think that was the issue, and yet I'm using a Behringer B-1, which is a pretty good little thing, so the problem is elsewhere in the audio pipeline. Still working on it...
Just sharing something I learnt from my own experience. A good mic can still produce bad quality recording if the recording Hz is set too low, which they are by default. Might be worth checking - Control panel - sound - microphone properties - advanced, and the check the default format. Mine is set at 1 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (studio quality).
If you're already set at a high quality recording rate it must be something else.
G H O T I C S T Y L E A R C H I T E C T U R E
I hope you v pick up around 256k subscribers... ;)
It'd be nice to have a lot of people viewing my videos, hopefully learning from them, and also correcting them where I'm wrong, certainly. 256000 seems a very daunting number right now, but who knows it might go there. I'm not really the kind of person who makes these videos in search of popularity or fame; it's more a way to vent the endless amount of trivia and modest amount of actual knowledge I've got stored up in my brain.
RobertExplains That's roughly Shads subscriber count.... :)
I noticed. :D
RobertExplains hopefully you'll get at least 1000 subs so you can get monetized :)
+Isaiah OConnor - I'd need 4000 watch-hours as well (I'm currently at 360 or something) and to maintain that on an annual basis. I suppose that if growth continues, 1000 subs and 4000 watch-hours is an achievable goal, but as I said, I don't really care that much about popularity or fame, and while it might be nice to get paid a little for making these videos, I won't automatically flip the switch when I cross that threshold; I'll first want to have a good internal debate about the merits of an extra income stream (which will be very small initially) when it means pushing ads to my viewers. Don't know what I'll decide on yet, don't know if I'll soon reach the point where that decision will need to be made, but should it come to that, I'll handle it then and there. For now, I'm busy with my next video. Just finished the script, and I'll probably start creating the visual assets tomorrow, in the hope I'll be able to release the video somewhere during the weekend.
Another member of the shad flood.
I must say I'm enjoying this flood a lot more than I would most floods. :p Welcome!
And I'm subscriber 809 lol I don't remember my spot in line for I am shad only that I found him through his first ever castle video Wich was 4 hours old when I found it and subbed. I had spent years searching Google for blueprints or floorplans of castles and got nothing so I finally tried RUclips and there second or third from the top was
ruclips.net/video/ZBn7f3H-eqM/видео.html
Names and terms of a midevil Castles parts, FINALLY I found something on castles, I was 30 at the time and had been trying to find this info sense highschool but I stink at searching online thus no knowledge. At the time I was trying to make a large castle in Minecraft and build with the land on this massive piller of stone topped with dirt and nearly large enough for the entirety of honor guard zwinger and all and I was getting fed up with my ineptitude and finally tried RUclips. Never did finish that castle but at least I got a hell of a floorplan played out and got the wall and part of the great hall and stables built.