A pavement in architecture is a stone or tile structure which can serve as a floor or an external feature. Pavements can be made of flagstones, tiles or mosaic.
Another improvement, thin-shell construction, takes advantage of the inherent structural strength of certain geometric shapes, such as hemispherical and elliptical domes; in thin-shell construction great distances are spanned with very little material.
The perfecting of reinforced concrete has profoundly influenced structural building techniques and architectural forms.
See A. Raafat, Reinforced Concrete in Architecture (1958); J. Waddell, Concrete Construction Handbook (1968); D. Orchard, Concrete Technology (1976).
The result is that all the medieval architects of Western Europe, with the exception of that produced during the space of a century and a half, and chiefly within the limits of the old Royal Domain of France, is denied the title of Gothic.
The era when architecture was to be the favourite mode for the artistic voicing of a civilization was, at least in the South, nearly at an end; painting and sculpture were to take its place, and therefore the Gothic architecture of Italy was to remain both racially alien and in its nature episodical.
Thus in the hour of political and economic misfortune, in the midst of the financial ruin and degradation of the Church, was born flamboyant architecture -- the last frail blossom of medieval genius.
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