The pointed arch and
ribbed vault gave a new lightness and permitted more refinement and subtlety of form.
She is a member of the Latvian Union of Artists--which occupies a 19th century Gothic-revival mansion known as Zvartava Castle--and based the bat wings on the distinctive concave geometry of Gothic
ribbed vaults. Something of a medieval flavour lingers in her use of the forms in Batgirl, despite her free interpretation of the ribs and spans of the vaults and the rather classical volutes in which the metacarpals of the wings terminate.
Following the introduction, the students examined the differences between barrel and
ribbed vaults, an the differences between Romanesque and Gothic architecture by looking a several examples as well as a film strip
The palace area consists of a sequence of courts leading into each other, and its much ruined buildings reveal the routine use of domes, pointed arches, pyramidal vaults,
ribbed vaults, and squinch zones.
However, Islamic sources and the Iberian Peninsula's own heritage of Moorish and Gothic monuments (notably the exceptional late Gothic and Manueline
ribbed vaults and cloisters of the monastery of Batalha or the Jeronimos in Lisbon) have furnished Rewal with equally significant and appropriate design precedents.