The Bitter cup of Coffee
Elder Sanchez


© Elder Sanchez

© Elder Sanchez


© Elder Sanchez
Gothic architecture is like that first bitter cup of coffee which wakes you up in the morning after a long and tiresome all-nighter. From the milk to the production, there are a lot of similarities revolving around the two contrasting themes and yet they go together better than salt and pepper.
To prepare a cup of joe as most adults know, we must add the coffee first then push the power button to activate the coffee maker to boil the water which makes the coffee. While conveniently separating the coffee grounds from the enriching beverage. As favorable as we have become to our morning routine, it was not always as easy as pushing a button. In the past people such as cowboys and even around the world like in modern day Yemen, South Arabia in the middle of the 15th century; had to boil a pot over an open fire or on a bed of hot coals while pouring in ground roasted coffee beans into water, and waiting until the liquid overspilled piping hot to drink. While this method of drinking joe with coffee grounds was believed to help funnel the unsanitary drinking water through the coffee, some still did not like drinking it with the grounds. Thus, the problem gave innovators a chance to make changes and make the magical elixir drinkable. In terms of coffee, it was thanks to Melitta Bentz in 1908 whom first invented the first drip coffee maker using a filter and opened the gate to a new modernistic world.
What the first drip coffee maker is to the modern machine. Gothic architecture is to modern architecture. Even though the term gothic was derived from a disapproving point of view by the citizens in Europe at the time after the movements decreased in popularity in the 1150’s. Surprisingly named after the Goths or “barbarians” who ransacked the cities. The citizens believed that the architecture was a blemish in European history, but we now know it is a grandiose spotlight.
The designers of the gothic design movement in the 1100’s to the 1200’s when the movement was at its best rise, were said to be great pioneers of their times looking to design new modernistic buildings of their era with structures which resolved the problems of having elementary designs with dark, cold, and damp chambers. The ways in which the movement resolved such disturbances is by opening the buildings up to have more spacious and dynamically lit rooms. As well as having the new structures sprawl conglomerations toward the skies which were only possible through the finely shaped structures and the flying buttresses support. This was an amazing feat at the time due to no other buildings being able to be built at such altitudes due to the lacking knowledge and resources. Throughout the totality of the structural designs, the buttresses were not the only supporting factors which helped the gothic movement reach new heights and fame. Through the pointed arches used in doorways and windows which helped the base hold up more weight than ever before seen, and the vaulted ceilings spreading such gravitational forces, gothic architecture became a finely tuned structural beast. Nevertheless, the greatness did not end there. Designers even highlighted the buildings with ornaments from head to toe of the constructions’ structural membranes to the smallest rain gutters.
Hence these are the reasons why gothic architecture is not a blemish but a spotlight in history. Without such achievements, modern architecture today would not have been able to advance so much through structural designs. Gothic architecture truly is the first bitter cup of coffee in the morning, some hate it while others long for it and yet it allows us to commence our days while we charge to the future.