Rib vaults in Joseph Ribes’ “Llibre de trasas de viax y muntea”

Abstract

The manuscript of Joseph Ribes, the Llibre de Trasas de viax and muntea (1708), is an authentic treatise on stone cutting in which an extensive collection of tracings of all types appears. The book, devoid of text, contains traces ranging from medieval stonework to classical stereotomy. Unfortunately, this important work has not received the attention it deserves and its content lacks still a rigorous study today. This article aims to present some features of this treatise, particularly the extensive chapter on the ribbed vaults.

The ribbed vaults proposed by Ribes show unexpected formal solutions and unprecedented variations. Ribes studied forty different vaults sorted by the number of keystones used to build them: from the simplest with one keystone, to the most complicated with seventeen. The large number of vaults studied, unsurpassed by any other known treatise, and the originality of their designs, make this book a fundamental reference among European treatises on stereotomy.

In the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), we have had the opportunity to build one of these vaults, undoubtedly one of the most original of the manuscript. It is a network vault of clearly Germanic inspiration. This extraordinary opportunity has allowed us to gain deeper knowledge of the vault as presented in the second part of this article.