flying buttress
Sign in to saveAlso known as flying buttresses
ramping arch from the top of a wall to support a higher pier
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- buttress
Show 3 more facts
- described by source
- Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
- Commons category
- Flying buttresses
- Commons gallery
- Arc-boutant
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
Arching above a side aisle roof, flying buttresses support the main vault of St. Mary's Church, in Lübeck, Germany.
The flying buttress (arc-boutant, arch buttress) is a specific form of buttress composed of a ramping arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, to convey to the ground the lateral forces that push a wall outwards, which are forces that arise from vaulted ceilings of stone and from wind-loading on roofs.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “flying buttress” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.