In the western Christian world, early builders of taller and taller churches discovered a problem — the stresses on the walls tended to make them bow outwards. The early church builders used stone, and a bowed wall could easily crack and fail, as the outside part would be in tension (Figure 1a), and stone is weak in tension.
A way around this problem was to build some sort of buttress on the outside. Triangular structures were originally used. Figure 1b shows this with some exaggeration. It was then realised that the whole buttress structure was not needed (the lines of force simply had to be contained within the remaining buttress). This meant that the central part could be removed, and if a covering was constructed over adjacent buttresses then the church could have side aisles (Figure 1c) — an attractive extra space.
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