St. Kilometer Cathedral

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4

Part 1 - Introduction

Using all of my current knowledge of Gothic architecture and the game Minecraft as my medium, I built a simulated cathedral in what was intended to be a French Late Gothic style, aiming to be as historically accurate as possible. Although I based my design around the principles of real cathedrals, the design is not meant to be an exact copy of any real piece of architecture. Since we cannot (and wouldn't want to) take apart any old churches to see the "guts" of them so to speak, I documented my construction hoping that it might serve as a lighthearted educational tool. I liken it to one of those gummy dissection frogs you can buy. It's certainly not a real frog, but most of the pieces are in the right place when you cut it open. Please enjoy the construction of St. Kilometer cathedral, and kudos if you can pick up a couple new terms along the way. If you find any of the content on this page to be too dry or boring for your liking, skip on to Part 2, which is choc-full of pictures to look at.

About Gothic architecture (briefly)

I've broken my Minecraft cathedral down into a plan (which is essentially a blueprint), and an elevation ("cutaway" showing the structure). I recommend checking out Chartres cathedral as a real life counterpart to my plan, and/or this Wikipedia segment, which explains everything in far more detail than I do. Also, I shall henceforth be referring to my creation as "St. Kilometer," since it was recently pretend-consecrated and that is what I named it.

One of my biggest regrets in the construction of St. Kilometer is that I did not spend enough time researching the dimensions of real buildings. At completion, the total height of St. Kilometer's vault measures closer to the ground than most of even the humbly-sized French Gothic cathedrals (19m/~62ft) and it's total length is fairly short (only 60m/~197ft). Because of this shortness in the length and height, all other dimensions are predictably smaller than average, too. Still, all of the essential components are there, and my dimensions seem more or less proportionally accurate with regards to themselves. If I do another cathedral build, I will undoubtedly make sure that I go BIGGER.

About Minecraft

Minecraft is a game in which players interact with a spontaneously-generated world composed entirely of cubes. Players collect various resource cubes (wood, stone, and dirt, for instance) and then may place them like building blocks in any order they would like. Players can also use these blocks to construct items and tools including torches, mining picks, axes, shovels, armor, and weapons to aid them in their adventures. Monsters emerge at night, and players encounter threats like lava, falling damage, and completely losing their bearings above or below ground on a regular basis. The world is fraught with peril, which adds an interesting challenge to every project.

This cathedral was built on a "survival" multiplayer Minecraft server with zero helpful modifications, meaning I had to deal with gravity, plenty of enemies night, usually-helpful-but-sometimes-nefarious neighbors, and many other encumbrances to my character's mere existence whilst building this. All said, this was built in an authentically "medieval" setting.