A medieval Gothic monastery built using CAD / CAM | Hacker News Reader

A medieval Gothic monastery built using CAD / CAM

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167 pointsmagda_wang84 comments

I could not find out how much a stone CNC milling machine costs. Does anyone know?

It would be amazing to build a house with decorative elements like this. I've considered it for wood before -- but external carved stone would be amazing.

On Alibaba they starts from 40k USD. So I would bet the costs are at least $100k.

Plus these things basically require an extra building to house. But i guess people who are space poor should not build monasteries :)

It's a industrial robot with a cnc add on?

https://www.kuka.com/en-us/products/process-technologies/mil...

Open source version:

https://rosindustrial.org/news/2015/8/2/3d-automatic-path-pl...

https://docs.v1e.com/mpcnc/intro/

Its a complex field but like 3d printers moving fast. You too shall engrave your families history into these walls.

> It's a industrial robot with a cnc add on?

No. More like these, but bigger: https://www.stylecnc.com/stone-carving-machine/

As seen on some photos: https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/a-medieval-gothic-monastery-... https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/a-medieval-gothic-monastery-... https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/a-medieval-gothic-monastery-... https://hackaday.com/2023/01/13/a-medieval-gothic-monastery-...

any of these machines range $20-500k, depending on age, tech, quality, accuracy, etc.

I believe this site has hit HN before: https://carmelitegothic.com/cnc-stone-carving/

It was quite a while ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33940043

Robotic wire cutting for architectural purposes has been a relevant innovation. That process is an order of magnitude more effective: you're cutting with a wire rather then a chipping a way with a milling bit. With a wire you're cutting 2 faces at a time, which is an important advantage over milling.

These diamond wires are also used for quarrying the stone.

https://vimeo.com/94076571

The BRG Group at ETH Zürich has delivered some stunning project exploring a modern take on stereotomic / stone construction, both in terms of fabrication and engineering

https://vimeo.com/167868985

I was told we can't build like that anymore.

Shocker, the Bauhaus graduates didn’t want people thinking different. ;)

Brutalism is yet another form of socialism that managed to make the world a bit sadder.

Brutalism-as-an-aesthetic-choice is cool, as-mandated-dogma just god awful.

It always was an architectural movement influenced by political motivations: reaction to nostalgic architecture of the 40s and low cost social housing influenced by socialist principles. It was pretty much imposed in uk by the government after the war and created a series of terrible housing estates in which crime proliferated (because they are impossible to police). Brutalist aesthetic became a thing long after, as an acquired taste.

Also tbh when people think of brutalist aesthetics they usually think of the same few grand building (like the Barbican Centre in London) that costed a lot of money, are constantly maintained to this day and are kind of an one-off. The day to day reality of brutalism, unfortunately, are huge blocks of high density houses in terrible maintenance conditions (reinforced concretes dissolves easily and leaves leaks and rusty rebar exposed) that cannot be replaced anymore.

I don't disagree, but i don't like how you make out socialism as the villain, sounds like you grew up with a lot of cold war propaganda. The absence of socialism means violence and war. If the states had a working social system, crime rates would be much lower. Personally I like to blame humanism for everything, that is, the delusion that humans are somehow better than what we really are.

I don't disagree that some degree of social policy is needed for a country to be healthy. Brutalism, though, was the blind application of the socialist principles to architecture, which generated more misery than what it tried to prevent.

So maybe it was the blind (I'd say ignorant, grandiose, paternalistic) application, and not the principles, that caused the misery?

Btw, I'm neither a socialist or proponent of modern architecture. Will call those out for their bs anytime too.

Please don't use socialism as a word for "thing I don't like".

I am so tired of this. No, I am not siding with socialists. I despise them, but I don't make the mistake of blaming bad things like me stubbing my toe on "socialism" just because I don't like a group of people.

Brutalism isn't socialism. I hope you will remember that.

Brutalism and socialism are so intertwined, it’s like saying women and people aren’t the same thing. Technically true but it’s still a stupid point.

Most brutalists might have been into socialism but definitely not most socialists are into brutalism. So blaming socialists for the failures of brutalism is logically wrong.

The stones are just outer cladding. Like any large modern construction it's all poured concrete inside. You can see rebar in some of the pics

That is kind of sad. Any building using rebar won't last as long as a purely compression based structure.

Wait till you hear about how modern metallurgy and material science is better than ancient katana hammer smiths. There was a post here earlier today about how an overpriced comb is better because it's artisanal and handmade.

We cannot, but there are several specialists from Turkey, Iran and other Middle Eastern states who can still do.

> there are several specialists from Turkey, Iran and other Middle Eastern states who can still do

That makes it sound like somehow only those people can carve stone? That is far from the truth.

Look at this guy for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTCVaDTxTC4

He is a young fella somewhere in a UK happily knocking on stone until it becomes part of a cathedral. It is merely an economic decision how many of the like of him we wish to pay for.

Because when those old buildings get destroyed (usually in a war, because they last forever), you would not find anybody in the west to be able to repair or re-erect it. You can only fly in specialists from there.

Such as the stonebridge from Mostar.

Well, technically, at the scale to house urban populations - no, because a) it’s expensive b) the talent is super scarce c) it’s so much cheaper and easier to source concrete buildings

I’m sure one could source enough talent for few baroque villas or such but I have no idea what the budget would be.

Obvious example is Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia - don’t know how much of that is ’traditional’ vs ’non-traditional’ though.

And as the article notes, the monks quickly learned that doing all this manually would have been cost prohibitive.

I think we romanticize in our day and age the “method”. That is, we think that gothic architecture can only be built using the methods of the middle ages, that otherwise it is “fake”. It’s a strange prejudice that would have been foreign to the builders and architects of the original gothic cathedrals. These were people who were at the cutting edge of architectural technology and skill, certainly the cutting edge in Europe, not people who romanticized “being artisanal”. Frankly, the sophistication of gothic architecture rivals much of what we build today in many respects.

We also suffer from the strange, progressive, prejudiced belief that older styles are “anachronistic” if used today. They’re just styles. What does time have to do with anything? Architectural developments since the middle ages might change how we build such architecture or remove what had previously been a constraint imposed by the methods of the day (note the neogothic), but the essential character can remain the same…or it can undergo development.

I think that the availability of CNC machines makes architecturally beauty all the more accessible. Why we aren’t taking more advantage of the possibilities, I don’t know.

b and c aren’t really applicable if you use modern methods for producing the decoration and still use concrete for the underlying structure. Modern builders just hate decoration due to bias. I’m not even sure cost is necessarily a reason because lots of bizarre and unnecessary structure is added to some buildings just to make them unique.

Look into:

Institute of Classical Architecture & Art : https://www.classicist.org/

National Civic Art Society: https://www.civicart.org/

Having read Anathem recently, I'm disappointed that they aren't taking it upon themselves to learn how to do it by hand.

That would probably take a lot more time both in learning and execution.

Exactly. The whole point of doing replica of something so old especially for religious reasons is the struggle. It doesnt matter how long it would take or hard it would be. It might never get finished and in this case that would be fine too.

Instead this seems closer to concrete/plaster Disneyland for monks wanting to roleplay times long gone.

It is probably still a multi generational project.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. Gothic architecture was the state of the art when it arrived on the scene, as were the building techniques involved. Sure, the labor involved dedication, perhaps it was penitential for some, but no one was maximizing for labor and exertion. Labor also cost money.

Exactly this is neither state of the art creative neither its valuable for the journey/hand process.

I know where you're coming from, but I'm not sure I agree.

Traditional medieval cathedrals were built right on the limits of the materials, skills and labour available and still took generations and sometimes still collapsed due to overambition: especially lantern crossings, which are heavy and only supported in the corners.

Builders of cathedrals used the cutting edge tools and techniques of their days. If they'd declared, say, vaulted ceilings "cheating", they wouldn't have done what we see today.

I don't see a tension here: to them, perhaps, the monks are using skill, tools and material God made available to them to do the best they can (also considering the labour force God has not given them). Rejecting God's offer of tools that can make a better cathedral would be like a medieval architect swearing off a horse-powered crane to get a heavy keystone in place.

And for that matter, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is only as complete as it is due to CNC stone cutting and other modern machinery.

I just wish, considering these kinds machines exist, that we could have them used to make beautiful building again in general, rather than always plumping for a variation on a glass-and-steel box (perhaps it's simply about the cost, but I do wonder if it's also about what's even possible to draw in AutoCAD for a normal architect!).

I think the very effort, the manual investment, was a form of sacrifice and honouring of god in itself. Ergo, this would be cheating.

(atheist)

I think either way this takes investment and effort. Just because you’re not chiseling it yourself doesn’t make it easy. As well one other factor is that the Carmelites are traditionally a “contemplative” order, so it may be very in line with their traditions to devote their time to God even if it’s via doing it via CAD/CAM.

(Christian, non-Catholic)

I'm not convinced an atheist would write this comment. I mean, you are literally writing about your own religious standards.

Poster here - I am an atheist. I can still be sympathetic to and to an extent even understand others' belief without sharing them.

It's not as if cathedral designers did it themselves manually. They'd farm it out to legions of "biorobots", not all of whom did it solely for the love of God (not only did stonemasons like to feed their families, occasionally, though not that often, workers could even be prisoners of war). Obviously it was eventually done manually, with some animal effort, out of necessity, but I strongly doubt no computers, hydraulics, electrical power, carbide tips or pneumatics would have been used, had they been available.

Something I've wondered about CAD for a long time (as a non-user) is whether the sheer physical labor involved in operating the CAD software influences design choices.

It absolutely does. I've made do, even when feeling I've left a theoretically achievable ideal-to-me outcome on the table, plenty of times with what's easy to do with the tool, in MCAD tools, ECAD tools, drawing tools, as well as software tools like compilers, libraries, OSes, etc. Hell, even the choice to avoid BGA ICs because your assembly ability isn't great can easily in "as good as I can do here right now".

For a quick third-party example: the Apple Mac Mini has a very special and deliberate corner design: it's not a radius, it's a "squircle", which makes the curve blend into the straight edge. Many CAD tools don't natively or easily support this, so you see a lot of slightly less "beautiful" designs with a simple circular radius, presumably partly driven by "this was just easy in the CAD tool".

From Akin's laws: 38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.

I was automatically thinking they are doing it for the process/experience.

I am very aware cathedrals used to be cutting edge architecture/process. And new churches are still being build like that.

But making building that looks 600 years old today is opposite of cutting edge.

Thats why this effort doesnt make sense to me.

Catholicism is known for recognizing of value in bringing beauty into the world, but AFAIK it's agnostic (see what I did here?) about using hand vs tech in achieving this goal. Also, it's not replica, it's a new thing following old tradition.

Is it a new thing? Cathedrals were made by creative trying to be creative and push things available at the time. Cutting edge. Lots of new churches being built today are like that. Its actually one of few types of buildings where clients still care less about economics and more about quality/beauty.

This is neither creative nor is it contemplating hand process.

My dictionary defines 'replica' as a copy [of an object]. So unless this monastery is a copy of another monastery (and according to what I read it's not) it's not replica. Not being a copy, it's absolutely a new thing as much as a blues song written yesterday, in spite of blues not being new thing.

replica means that its fake. Yes its a copy, of monasteries generally, not of a particular monastery.

I literally quoted above the definition of the word. I'd rather not re-define it for a HN thread because it's clearly among the worst ways to conduct any discussion. On top of that even your 'copy' is not what it conventionally means. And there's a reason for that. Your personal definition simply isn't productive. It leaves no space for category, style, tradition. Even you yourself would be 'fake' if your definition is true. You know, humans like you definitely existed before you.

They are doing it themselves though, just with modern tools.

Can someone please explain why they are using styrofoam inside the walls of the cathedral? Styrofoam is basically plastic.

Isolation

Probably for insulation to reduce heating costs.

It's exactly plastic. It's probably thermal insulation. Certainly my house has thick sheets of expanded polystyrene in the floor, and in the roof. I think in the walls is glass fibre, but you can use plastic foam too.

Insulation.

Stone is pretty terrible at insulating.

Old cathedrals are either cold, or extremely expensive to heat.

Insulation is about retaining heat. In the netherlands there's been too much emphasis on heat retention in houses built over the last ~15 yrs or so -- these houses are uncomfortable during the summer, since retaining too much heat. Another interesting take is that "passive" houses require heaps of mechanical ventilation, and these systems wear out in ~15-20 yrs. So over the course of the lifespan of a house, that adds up significantly.

Stone actually can work well with the proper detailing (dealing with cold bridging, styrofoam is a good way to break the cold bridging ):

Heat Storage: Stone, being a dense and heavy material, has a high thermal mass capacity. It can absorb and store a significant amount of heat during the day when exposed to sunlight or internal heat sources like heating systems. This stored heat is gradually released back into the indoor space during cooler periods, such as evenings or nights, helping to stabilize indoor temperatures and reduce heating or cooling requirements.

Temperature Regulation: The thermal mass of stone can act as a natural temperature regulator, slowing down temperature fluctuations within a building. During hot summer days, stone absorbs excess heat, keeping indoor spaces cooler. In colder weather, it releases stored heat, helping to maintain a more comfortable and consistent temperature.

Energy Efficiency: By using stone as a thermal mass material, buildings can reduce their reliance on mechanical heating and cooling systems. This, in turn, can lead to significant energy savings and lower utility bills, as the building naturally regulates its temperature with less energy input.

Passive Solar Design: Stone can be strategically placed in a building's design to maximize its exposure to sunlight during the day. This allows for efficient passive solar heating, where the stone absorbs solar energy and releases it slowly, reducing the need for active heating systems.

The issue here is that all the nice heat storage effects you're talking about assume that the heating is radiant based. Most new heating systems are moving to forced air thermal pumps.

Cause it's the cheapest insulation. Not only is it plastic, it's also flammable and likes to revert to it's toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic precursor styrene.

Not only is this super cool by itself, there’s the possibility of transferred knowledge and someone else remixing to combine gothic and more modern ideas. Someone convince Elon to do the Mars base in nouveau-space-gothic.

Where do monks get the money to build this beast?

The real question is "why"? And why would anybody think that's a good idea?

Because many people believe that making beautiful things is a way to praise their God. Hopefully they're entitled to spend their money the way they like.

> beautiful things

My first association is "fake" - which _is_ appropriate to describe (especially the roman catholic) churches (organisations, not buildings). But I guess that that's not their intention ;)

> Hopefully they're entitled to spend their money the way they like.

I don't know about the US, but in Europe spending money in such a way would be heavily criticised.

They're relying on donations and money they make selling stuff (roasted coffee, I think) and they're spending the money to praise God, which is pretty much what a religious organization does. Hard to criticize them in any meaningful way.

> My first association is "fake"

Better fake than the the latest fad in architecture.

At least fake gothic could never have resulted in brutalist buildings.

Gothic Revival (aka Victorian Gothic) was the original "fake gothic" (gothic-style building built with "modern" Victorian tech) and tbh it's absolutely delightful. The same can't be said for Brutalism, which originated much later (1950-1960s) but generated frankly ugly and non-maintenable buildings.

Not sure if it counts as Victorian Gothic, but The Natural History Museum in London is one of the most delightful building I've seen.

Not only the general architecture, but all the natural history theme that applies to all the Gothic design elements. Animals replacing Gargoyles, etc.

A beautiful building.

Just down the road was the Imperial Institute [1], built in the 1880s. It was demolished in 1957 and now it looks like this [2] and this [3].

[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Institute.j...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sherfield_Building_over_Q...

[3]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_College_Bus...

You sometime have to wonder what they hell they were thinking. Who in their right mind would replace [1] by [2] and [3]?

I feel like you're generalizing "Europe" a bit. Look at the Orthodox church, they are deep-pocketed and heavily funding the construction of monasteries, an example being Romania. It's a common thing to see in Romania actually - a lot of churches being built, to a point where it's become a running joke that there are more churches than hospitals in Romania. It's a sad thing to see, but there's plenty of that in "Europe".

I had the privilege of attending a school with a hundred year old building and back in those days it was copying an even older architectural style and it was beautiful. Meanwhile most modern university buildings were plain ugly. The old brick and mortar buildings were my favourite even though the interior was comically out of date. I.e. creaky wooden floods and seating that looks like it had a 40 year history.

Why would anybody think that’s a bad idea? Religions construct houses of worship, it’s sort of what they’ve done for thousands of years.

Well, the money is theirs to spend, plus it's exactly on-brand for a religious organization to put traditional aesthetics over economic efficiency. I doubt that their donors are dissatisfied. If it was a government doing this with taxpayer money, then it would be different.

Beauty is worth spending and suffering for.

Absolutely not! Beauty is temporary and useless. Trust me I know, I am extremely beautiful and have lots of connections who are as well and hate it.

They no doubt receive donations, but they also roast coffee [0].

[0] https://www.mysticmonkcoffee.com/

Thanks.

From their about page - https://www.mysticmonkcoffee.com/pages/about-us-wyoming-carm...:

> From their monastery nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains, the Wyoming Carmelites (a small group of Carmelite Monks) were looking for a way to support their growing community.

> After much discernment and prayer, the monks had the inspiration to start roasting coffee and selling the beans online. The first samples were roasted on a cast-iron skillet in the monastery kitchen and in 2007, Mystic Monk Coffee, a catholic coffee company was born.

This is super awesome! Thanks for sharing.

I'm not against putting beauty and care into architecture, especially church architecture, on the contrary.

But I'm a little bit put off by the use of a gothic or neo-gothic style.

Gothic architecture was a result of particular time and place. Using it outside that place makes it look weird, like these weird copies of European site you see sometimes in Las Vegas or China. Those renders look a little bit out of place for the surrounding landscape.

One of the great things about traveling in Europe is so see how the basic format of a Church – the roman basilica – has evolved into multiple different regional (and temporal) styles and by using local architectural styles making Church architecture local. Backsteingotik in Northern Europe, Isabelline Gothic in Spain, Renaissance architecture in Italy, and so on – every one is beautiful in its own way.

I'd would have love to see a monastery which is local to the architectural styles of Wyoming but with the craftsmanship used for this. Not being wyomese (?) I don't know how that would look – Google Images suggests maybe a mixture of stone and wood – but I would have liked to see it.

Stonecutters, right out of the Simpsons.

No, the Stonecutters was a parody of the Freemasons. Ironically, there has never been anything the Catholic Church has published more formal statements denouncing, than Freemasonry. Not even the big ones like Abortion have as many.

So much so, Francis released a formal response to a dubia (formal questioning) reaffirming that Catholics cannot be Freemasons just last week - even though the Freemasons represent a silly social club now, compared to what they used to be.

The Freemasons today may be obsolete as a revolutionary political force (note Philippe Egalite’s comparison of Freemasonry to a candle and revolution to the sun), but the primary reason Catholics cannot be Freemasons is theological. Freemasonry, despite what its members might claim, makes definite theological assertions that are incompatible with Christianity, and specifically, Catholicism.

[0] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/what-are-the-masons...

This is the kind of content I come to hacker news for - thank you for posting and thank up voters for upvoting!

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