The Secret Lives Of Buildings: From The Ruins Of The Parthenon To The Vegas Strip In Thirteen Stories - Plot & Excerpts
The doors of the temple had become the gates of Troy, and the Christian apse the throne of Plato. There is no such thing as a perfect copy, and stories and buildings are transformed quite as much as they are preserved in the process of repetition. The rituals of the Middle Ages sustained a seemingly stable world, but they were also the agents of transformation. The long construction and reconstruction of Gothic cathedrals was a process of copying: each generation of apprentices learned at the feet of the master mason, became master masons themselves, and passed their wisdom on to their own apprentices. But this process was also one of evolution: each generation, in learning from its predecessors, altered what it found, and passed its altered learning on to successors who did the same. The architecture of the earliest cathedrals was an austere, simple affair, but over several centuries it grew into something of wondrous sophistication and complexity. Because cathedrals took such a long time to build, this evolution manifested itself not only in the construction of new buildings but in the refurbishment of existing ones.
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