Stories by Robert Mark

This religious center, cultural icon and UNESCO World Heritage Site is also an engineering marvel

Gothic builders used the cathedrals themselves as models, modifying designs as structural problems emerged. An analysis of buttressing patterns shows that information spread rapidly among building sites

He was a prominent man of science and a renowned architect at the height of the Scientific Revolution, but he did not exploit principles of theoretical mechanics in designing his buildings

Comparison of Chartres and Bourges by optical stress analysis relates the aesthetic achievement to structural imperatives and suggests that later Gothic cathedrals may have been patterned on the wrong building