Movement
Gothic Architecture
Explore in the Atlas →The medieval style of the soaring cathedral, combining the pointed arch, ribbed vault and flying buttress to dissolve walls into luminous stained glass; born at Abbot Suger's choir of Saint-Denis (dedicated 1144) and spread across Europe as the architecture of Christian worship.
Ritual Memory
Details
- Origin
- Île-de-France, France
Classifications
- Holder
- Communal intergenerational
- Source of authority
- Revelation cosmologyAncestry
- Subject
- Human centred
- Cosmological orientation
- Axis mundiCardinal axes
- Political position
- Hegemonic
- Degree of codification
- Pattern based
- Mode of transmission
- Apprenticeship
- Knowledge type
- Relational embodied
- Epistemic cluster
- Western philosophicalCross cultural cosmological
Connections
- influenced Gothic Revival
Referenced by
- Spiro Kostof associated with
Sources
- Otto von Simson. The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order. Princeton University Press, 1956.
Cite this entry
First published May 2026Last revised Jul 2026
CLAD. "Gothic Architecture." Atlas of Architectural Thought. CLAD, 2026. https://www.cl-ad.com.au/research/atlas/movement/gothic-architecture/. Accessed July 17, 2026.