Anamnesis de una estructura. La Catedral de Vitoria entre los siglos XII y XX

Abstract

The Cathedral of Vitoria is a building with an extended historical life. We have attempted to produce a chronological sequence of the interventions and architectural “projects” since the beginning of the construction of the church on the early 13th century to the last restorations during the 1960s. This study attempts to fill a void on the available information, crucial for the evaluation of safety and durability issues on the Cathedral. The “anamnesis” practiced on the monument is one of the cornerstones of the method we have chosen for restoration, not only regarding the structural aspects, but regarding the problems of functional interpretation and symbolic content as well. This historical reading the key of structural analysis is what we intend to present: the extraction of the historical building sequence that leads to the current situation of the building, discriminating the different moments of the architectural project, phases of building growth and repair interventions on the structure that comment on or contradict among themselves, to result in the form that we witness now. We use that sequence to evaluate, albeit partially, the safety status of the structure, and to build a working hypothesis for the structural aspects of the restoration tasks.