La bóveda sexpartita del Monasterio de Santa María de Huerta, Soria_02 Print E-mail

[....] In Spain, this type of vault also had its moment of glory. Though it was partly used in some interesting buildings, it reached its maximum perfection in cathedrals such as Cuenca, Sigüenza and the extremely beautiful refectory in the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Huerta(Figs. 5).

The inspiring context previously described gave way, in Madrid's Escuela Superior de Arquitectura, to the idea of writing a doctoral thesis on European sexpartite vaults. The aim was to take them out of the general context of the cross ribbed vaults in order to shed light on the constructive means which undoubtedly this type of structures offers. One of the research paths undertaken to tackle this issue was the real construction of one of these vaults.

Workshop on Gothic construction

Out of the Spanish sexpartite vaults, was selected one vault covering one of the four sections of the refectory at the monastery of Santa María de Huerta (Fig. 6). Among the determining factors to decide to build it were the perfection of its achievement as well as its possible influence in the cathedrals of Sigüenza and Cuenca. Its characteristics are: an almost square plan, the approximate dimension of each section is 9X9 and the model to build would have scale 1:3, 3 meters each side. [....]

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