CONSTRUCTIONAL IMPLICATIONS
The reconstruction of this colossal structure poses problems
as difficult as the bewildering riddle of its purpose. Its
great central hall (measuring 45 feet by 60 feet) is 5 feet
wider than the nave of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall.
It is technically possible to span such a distance with tie
beams of very heavy scantling—the abbey church of Fulda
had a nave width of well over 50 feet (16.70 m.)—but the
fact remains that an aisled hall with an open center space
of 45 feet is not known to have existed in the earlier Middle
Ages at any place, with the solitary exception of the Great
Hall of the Palace of Westminster (1097-99) which owed
its inordinate dimensions to a very unusual set of historical
circumstances.[341]
Even in the largest monastic barns of the
thirteenth century the center aisle rarely exceeds a span of
30 feet, and, in general, stays below the range of 20 feet.[342]
Where barns attained a width that was in any manner comparable
to the building with which we are here concerned,
their roofs were supported not by two but by four ranges of
freestanding inner posts, as in the great monastic barn of
Parçay-Meslay in France (figs. 352-354).[343]
In order to
bring our building a little closer to both constructional
realities as well as to what appears convincing in the light
of existing historical parallels, we have introduced in our
reconstruction two inner rows of roof-supporting posts
along lines which have no equivalent on the Plan itself.
This is not quite as arbitrary as it may appear on first sight.
The inventor of the scheme of the Plan, as I have already
pointed out,[344]
was not preoccupied with the definition of
the constructional details of his houses—these were fixed
by tradition, and therefore not in need of further specification.
Instead he chose to give his full attention to defining
the size and functional boundaries of its component spaces.
We shall meet this same problem again when discussing the
Granary, the House for Bloodletting, and the hall in the
House for Horses and Oxen.[345]
The colossal dimensions of the large anonymous building
may elicit the thought that the designing architect was not
aware of the unusual dimensional and constructional implications
of what he drew. If this were so, it would be in
complete departure from the procedures that he followed
everywhere else in the Plan. Wherever the relation of size
to function can be checked, it is apparent that at every step
of his work the draftsman operated in full awareness of the
dimensional realities involved. Accordingly, if he drew a
house 80 feet wide and 100 feet long, we must assume he
did so because he felt that there was a need for a house of
such dimensions.
