Building a Cathedral

Yes, the scope of an accretive building grows, and as it grows, so too do the budget and the schedule – but for institutions, something that evolves, lasts, and commands an ever-larger budget is often deemed a success, not a project gone amok. Elena Giovannoni and Paolo Quattrone tackle this relationship between buildings and institutions in a paper about another notoriously incomplete cathedral, the one in Siena. At its most extreme point, in 1339, its members embraced a plan that would build a new nave perpendicular to the existing cathedral, turning the existing structure into the new building’s transept, making this cathedral the largest in the world.

Source: theprepared.org