Notes On: Appreciating Architecture... whatever the weather.

Chartres Cathedral in the cold. March 11th, 2008

You can’t really half-ass an interest in architecture. It’s not all sublime interiors and vast impossible spaces that illicit awe and wonderment. At some point you’ll find yourself standing outside in the freezing cold and driving rain… looking at a wall.

A wall you travelled a very long way to see. A wall you’ll possibly never see again. A wall you’ve read about, written about, sketched and debated. You’ll either stand there getting colder and colder looking at this wall with a legitimate but altogether deranged intrigue, or you’ll decide a wall is really not worth the hypothermia and you’ll settle for the warm, comforting embrace of a half-assed relationship with that wall.

And that’s totally grand, you don’t have to love every wall you walk into.

I mainly remember the cold. How it sat on top of us as we stood there like a herd of shivering sheep in the corner of some desolate field. I still remember how its icy fingers slipped into every space between us. How it invaded our layers and deadened our toes and our fingers and our noses. The wet, damp, miserable, bitter fucking cold that felt as heavy and permanent and impermeable as this wall we had come to see.

The wall in question was one side of Chartres Catheral just south of Paris, France. We stood there peeking up at its many stained glass windows and pointed arches and flying buttresses with a legitimate interest. We were interested - honestly. The kind of cold hard interest that only undergraduate students on a study tour can have (the morning after a night out… oh dear). We were so desperately interested. Unfortunately we couldn’t hear our tutor over the din of weather. The cold was so loud. Its sheer volume consumed every utterance he made and was lost amongst the rattle of chattering teeth, the shuffling feet and that crumpling noise you get when the odd spirit is being broken.

Architecture’s no joke. Looking directly at architecture can be extremely dangerous. Talk to your doctor and close friends before considering an interest in architecture.

Inside, we found little respite. It turns out Chartres Cathedral is a fantastic example of high-gothic French architecture and 12th-century refridgeration. Even the warm air being pumped up through large grates in the floor was perishing in the freeze. Standing on these grates gave some feeling back to our toes but the heat had a slimy, greasy texture that spoiled the relief it provided. So we would opted instead to move as much as possible and take it all in as best we could.

It is by all accounts an impossible space. Such is the feeling when walking through any High Gothic cathedral, one is consistently aware of just how heavy the emptiness is. Knowing (but not quite being able to fully appreciate) the immense pressure and weight that is at once present and absent. In the gloom of that cold stormy day, the great columns of hewn stone reached like Atlas up into the vaulted darkness - trapped by its impossible duty - all of that stone, all of that time and memory and commitment, captured, gripped, formed into this place - this monumental area.

Illumination. A word that we associate both with light and decoration, with revalation and description. Chartres’ stained glass windows are truly illuminating. If you ever have the chance to visit (even in the coldest weather) it is worth it for the windows alone. It always astounds me to consider what the impact of seeing such a magnificent display of colour and light and story would have been on someone seven centuries ago. We are so used to the wide array of visual stimulous in our lives now that we almost take it for granted. But stepping inside Chartres Cathedral on even the dullest of days would leave you astonished - I can’t imagine how a medieval pilgrim would have felt being consumed by such majesty.

It is also still largely the original glass that has lasted up until now due to incredible dedication and feats of preservation by those that have protected this monument over the years. During WWII all of the windows were removed and preserved to protect them during the bombing and it is not hard to find stories of how close the Allies came to destroying the cathedral in fear of its towers being used by sharpshooters as a vantage point.

What a sight it must have been to see such a humongous stone structure with its ribs and bones exposed and the cold air flowing through like it flowed through us that day. Such is the power of stained glass windows that they somehow lift and elevate a building of massive scale and size like Chartres to the point that you forget just how huge it is. To remove those windows must have been to see the cathedral fall and lump upon the world’s surface like a gigantic paper weight… to replace them years later must have been the most magical act of levitation.

That day I was armed with a simple sony hand held camera, but one which allowed up to three exposures on a single image. Long exposures too. I found within those freezing walls an interesting effect in capturing long, handheld exposures of the windows and walls. What came out were the images I am sharing here today in this post. These are the only images I took that day and frankly they are useless as a detailed architectural record of my visit. Go figure.

However I was sucked in by the long rising columns and continuous soffit mouldings that ribbed the arches and flowed into the vaulting above before tracking along the ceiling and crashing back down the far side of the nave to the next column over. Looking back at these images now I am delighted I have them. They capture the effect of the space rather than the space itself. They are not really great images to look at, but that day was truly miserable and I suspect I was in no mood for much more than this.

Architecture in the cold is an extreme sport. It requires years of dedication and rock hard abs. Always remember to stretch before and after. Wear comfortable shoes.

And as Edward McParland always used to tell us: Just make sure you always look up!