enhanced by human logical design, while Avenue de Paris aligns the complex and reaches right into its center. The entire palace communicates the absolute power of the French monarchy at the height of its glory.2) Sky-orientedSome buildings look like they are being held down to the earth, as if they would float (or shoot) upwards given the opportunity. This illusion, called sky-oriented, occurs when a building exhibits the following trauts:it is taller than it is wideit has many windows, which are usually large, meaning that there is more exterior window space than wall spacethrough the use of ground-floor posts, arches or buttresses, it looks as if it is tethered or held down to the groundSky-oriented structures look best in the center of a city, worst by themselves on flat ground (where they seem quite alone).A Gothic church still generates a sense of aweand wonder for the person who enters its space and is possessed by its power. This style, evolving over centuries of church construction, emerged as a complex composition capable of expressing superbly the Christian faith of medieval western Europe. One of the most interesting examples of this style is the Chartres Cathedral in France, and in it you can discern the basic features of this style.The most obvious and characteristic feature of any Gothic structure is the pointed arch, an improvement over the rounded arches used in the earlier Romanesque style. While the Greeks considered post-and-lintel construction to be the ideal design for temple building, the Romans had made wide use of the rounded arch for their buildings, aqueducts and bridges. Instead of concentrating the weight of the roof on the bottom of each column, as in post-and-lintel, the arch spread this weight around. This gave the ability to construct multi- storied buildings, with each floor spreading its weight on the one below it. It also gave birth to buildings with domes and vaults, since both are essentially...
