Ziska Childs the art of design

If you stand underneath the choir loft of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Ile de la Cite in Paris and watch people walk past you towards the nave you will notice a curious thing. Everyone when they reach the edge of the nave looks up. Frenchmen look up. Englishmen look up, Japanese tour groups , Touregs in flowing blue robes, Australians in shorts, little babies, priests, rabbis, Buddhists, hindus, muslims, atheists, and even blind people look up.

Why?

Because everything, the vaulted Gothic arches, the dancing colors of the stained glass against the grey Paris sky, the soaring vertical clustered pillars, the acoustics, even the smell of a vast open space after a low closed space, everything makes you look up.

Human beings by nature look down. You look down before you look up. If you don't look down you might trip and fall. Anyone involved in the cleaning services will tell you "Clean floors make a house look clean".

The way in which this simple goal ("look up") is achieved involves multiple senses and multiple levels of understanding. It is Irresistible.

So, why look up? In the medieval Catholic tradition Heaven is "up". Inside a Gothic Cathedral you are inside the "New Jerusalem" lined with precious stones. The "books" of the stained glass are to be read by illiterate and scholarly alike. The "job" of the Cathedral is to teach and awe everyone, the masses, the army, the bureaucrats, the politicians, royalty, and the clergy.

This is done with choices of materials (stone and stained glass) , sculptured space (Gothic arches and flying buttresses), sound (whether it's the organ, the choir, or a lone bagpiper walking slowly down the center of the nave I guarantee you will feel the sound travel through your feet and up your spine) light, (the contrast of the darkened side aisles and the luminous clerestory) and smell (where the sun comes through it dissipates the candle smoke from the side chapels).

The building of the Cathedral was a nightmare. Don't think for one minute that this is a "perfect" building or a "perfect" design (if you want to see the perfect Gothic design go to Sainte Chapelle on a sunny day) Almost 300 years to "completion", 5 Kings, Protectorates, Regencies, revolts, crusades, war, fire, religious persecution, devaluation of currency, and a major "oops" around 1200 when they found out that the nave and the apse weren't on the same axis. All of this plus a 19th century restoration after the Mob had lopped off all the statues heads. It's a miracle that the Catherdral is there at all.

The desire to convey an idea to a great number of people is not unique. The ability to actually do it is very rare. I've seen it in the carved relief panels of the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an. I've seen it in the Solari Theatre in the Indian Arts School in Santa Fe (inspired by both a Greek Theatre and a Kiva).

What makes this design?

It is not the singular vision of an artist (like the Sistine Chapel or Guernica). It is a vast communal effort towards communicating a single idea.

It is the art of understanding.