Buttress

Lore & Background

Buttresses are architectural structures built against or projecting from a wall to support or reinforce it. They are fairly common on more ancient buildings, typically Gothic, where they act against lateral forces from inadequately braced roof structures. The term counterfort can be synonymous with buttress and is often used when referring to dams, retaining walls, and other structures holding back earth.

Reader's Guide

Buttresses have been used since at least the 4th millennium BC, as evidenced by early examples on the Eanna Temple in ancient Uruk. Their primary function is to provide support against lateral forces, particularly in Gothic architecture where roof structures required reinforcement. The terminology includes various types based on ground plan: clasping or clamped buttresses have an L-shaped plan surrounding a corner; angled buttresses have two buttresses meeting at the corner; setback buttresses are similar but set back from the corner; and diagonal (or 'French') buttresses bisect the angle between walls. The term counterfort is used synonymously for buttresses in dams and retaining walls. Buttresses remain significant in architectural history as a key structural element enabling the height and lightness of Gothic cathedrals, and they continue to be used in modern retaining walls and earth-holding structures.

Did You Know?

• Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings.
• Early examples of buttresses are found on the Eanna Temple (ancient Uruk), dating to as early as the 4th millennium BC.
• A diagonal (or 'French') buttress bisects the angle between the walls where they meet.

Birth of a Structural Revolution

Flying buttresses did not appear in isolation; they emerged as a logical consequence of a chain of structural innovations that transformed European building in the twelfth century. The pointed arch, the defining element of what we now call Gothic architecture, made possible the pointed rib vault, and it was the combination of these two features that gave rise to flying buttresses as a distinct structural component. This architectural language took shape in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France, evolving out of the heavier Romanesque traditions that had preceded it. A pivotal moment came at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, where the choir was rebuilt between 1140 and 1144. For the first time, the developing elements of the new style—pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and buttressing—were assembled together in a single construction, producing a building that prioritized soaring verticality and the dramatic passage of colored light through expansive stained glass. From that point forward, the structural vocabulary that included the flying buttress became the defining grammar of a new European architectural era.

Engineering Light and Height

The flying buttress served a very specific engineering purpose within the Gothic system: it allowed walls to be opened up dramatically while still supporting the weight of the vault above. By transferring lateral thrust outward to external supports, buttresses freed the wall surface from its load-bearing role, making possible the large stained glass windows and elaborate tracery that became hallmarks of the style. This was not merely an aesthetic choice. Theological doctrines of the period actively called for greater interior illumination, and the practical demands of growing congregations—pilgrims streaming into cathedrals at Chartres and Canterbury, for instance—pushed builders to create taller, wider, brighter interiors. The growing population and wealth of European cities provided both the financial means and the civic ambition to undertake such ambitious projects. Technical refinements in both vaulting and buttressing worked hand in hand: each improvement in the other's performance unlocked new possibilities for height and openness. The result was an architecture in which structural support and spiritual aspiration became inseparable, with the buttress acting as the hidden skeleton that held up the luminous skin of the building.

A Style Cursed by Its Name

The architecture that gave us the flying buttress spent centuries carrying a slur. Medieval builders themselves had no such negative label; they referred to their work in Latin as opus Francigenum, opus modernum, or novum opus, and Italian speakers simply called it maniera tedesca. The damage came later. In 1550, Giorgio Vasari, writing from a Renaissance Italy that had spent a century celebrating the revival of classical orders, dismissed the style as a 'barbarous German style' and blamed the Goths for destroying ancient Roman buildings and replacing them with this crude architecture. François Rabelais echoed the contempt a generation later. The assumption that classical architecture represented progress while the pointed-arch tradition represented regression proved remarkably durable. Christopher Wren, the polymath architect, was among the few to push back. He rejected the 'Gothic' label entirely, noting that the pointed arch owed more to Islamic building traditions than to any Germanic people, and he argued that the style had evolved organically over centuries as a legitimate architectural language rather than a single catastrophic blunder.

From Medieval Cathedrals to Modern Campuses

Although the Gothic style was gradually displaced by Renaissance architecture in Italy from the mid-fifteenth century onward, the building traditions it established—including the flying buttress—refused to disappear. In England and in what is now Belgium, pointed-arch construction continued to develop and flourish well into the sixteenth century, long after the Italian shift. A second wave of enthusiasm began in mid-eighteenth-century England, where a series of Gothic revivals spread across Europe through the nineteenth century and persisted, at least in modified form, into the twentieth. These later iterations favored churches and university buildings as their primary subjects, carrying the structural and visual vocabulary of the medieval buttress into new institutional contexts. Today, many of the finest surviving examples of the original medieval style have been recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites, and the architectural language of buttressed, light-filled spaces continues to shape how communities construct their most important public and sacred buildings across the continent.

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