BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – DREAM HOME DESIGNING BACKGROUND – UNIQUE HOME DESIGNING ARTICLES

By Before The Architect  Copyright 2009-2010

Got this note from a client not too long after our first meet.  He'd tried to suck me dry to confirm what he'd read about the building project he wanted to general contract.  I even talked with him about a couple aspects of the job that'd save him time and money and do a whole lot better for him and his than the way he'd sort of planned it out. 

So it's coming up time to begin the hard work - home designing and home drawing the job - and who writes but this guy to announce that I can kick back because the heat's off me:  he'd picked up a copy of some store-bought home drawing software from the public library; found it pretty easy to get used to; just knew that he was born to home designing and home drawing and home building with the best of 'em. 

Starting up, I reckoned him to be a bright fellow.  I reckoned wrong.  Before The Architect

TUSCANY COLUMN DESIGN, SECTION DETAIL IN ELEVATION

1)      This Tuscany Order column detail goes into any dream home plans set where that Order is designated 

2)     Tuscany column is easier to work with than the other Orders 

a)     Needs less height to sustain correctness than any of the other Orders

b)     Needs less atop it to sustain correctness than any of the other Orders – Vignola’s  and Palladio's illustrations to follow may be regarded by some as capitalized ‘over the top’ (pun intended)

c)      Sufficiently simple to work well with more home designs than most - common home ceiling heights present a Tuscany column well; whereas, the others (Doric aside) get leggy in those same ceiling heights

d)     Stylistically popular – nothing expulsive about ‘em 

Comment:  Never flute this Order; only correctly present it smooth.  You’ll see ‘em fluted here and there.  Fuggedaboudit.  Doric columns - Greek kin to Roman Tuscany - can be fluted at 20 concavities to the shaft - and, while slightly leaner at 8:1::height:base, the Doric sits flush to floor without a base, thusly regaining a modicum of its relative stumpiness.

Comment:  Please note that correctness of height can prevail with height-sized bases. 

Tuscany Column Design, Section Detail in Elevation

Note well that the design element in Tuscany columns is in maintaining all parts in proportion to the shaft's base at a specific elevation of the shaft.

3)     Source:  http:/www.grandtradition.net, originally.  The site’s gotten more difficult for this old boy to navigate; he’s not sure that you’ll find this one there anymore.  Note, please that the annotations are this dream home designer’s. 

Comment:  Such Classical sections are rare.

4) This of Palladio's Tuscany Order is of unknown source, easier than Vignola's to work with in .dwg, and appears almost identical up to an including the capitol scales not helping.

4)     The other Orders can overwhelm all but a few dream home design styles 

Commentary:  Among and between Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80–70 BC- c. 15 BC), Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), Sebastiano Serlio (6 September 1475 – c. 1554), Giacomo (or Jacopo) Barozzi (or Barocchio) da Vignola (October 1, 1507 - July 7, 1573), Andrea Palladio (30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580), and Vincenzo Scamozzi (September 2, 1548 - August 7, 1616) - each had his own - similar, but not identical when it came to Classical design.
 

The old boy has said pilasters are 1/5-1/4 depth of proximate round columns.  Could be.  AG's range of estimate = 1/5-1/2, most commonly referenced at 'about 1/3'.  More abundant profile = elaboration same as full columns, shape is rectilinear, and no entasis [shaft slope in from the vertical].  Less abundant profile =  vertical slice of the full-round column within the AG's range of estimate.  Knock yourself out.

Two kinds of less-than-full columns:  engaged and pilaster.  The former's intended to present as structural, the latter as decorative (mostly). The former's dimension is from a vertical slice of a proximate, full column at 5/8-3/4 of that column , the latter's at 1/5-1/4.  The former's size limits assure a shadow line; whereas, a half-column or less would not. Source:  Get Your House Right:  Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid by Marianne Cusato, AIA, et al., Sterling Publishing Company, 2007, p. 61.  (Marianne seems to have had no problem with nonrectilinear pilasters, bless her heart.)

The notion of a structural presentation is founded in two ways: philosophical and practical. 

The philosophical premise is, in AG's opinion, "apparent structure", and it professes that although materials and methods have advanced over time,  the mind's eye looks for the old signs, it habituates - for example, there's the sufficient and necessary lintel in masonry walls even when the wall is a single wythe and there's steel that's taken stone's place to crushproof the fenestration. (Best expression:  Traditional Construction Patterns:  Design & Detail Rules of Thumb by Stephen Mouzon et al., McGraw-Hill, 2004, pp.11-12.)  If a beam - faux or no - is carried to a wall, the mind's eye will be looking for the necessary and substantial support for it whatever; hence, cometh the 'engaged column'. 

The practical premise is two-fold in AG's opinion:

1. pain in the ass to work a wall behind a close-by column;

2. a to-wall column - pilaster or engaged - offers a correct facility to terminate masonry wall, in AG's opinion (in addition to interior, or re-entrant, corners) principally stone - natural or faux and brick - true or faux.  The pilaster's design utility (as it has no functional utility - that is, beyond masonry termini, according to AG) is principally to break up long, lonely, unelaborated, and unarticulated wall lines and otherwise to respect the design principle of intercolumniation (applicable to all columnar designs), effectively (it can get both prissier than this, but needn't) by not spacing columns in measure that exceeds the columns' height, thereby emphasizing vertical proportion, preferably in equal measure.  (While this intercolumniation thingy works well most of the time, in tall, Doric and Tuscany column applications, those suckers can get close enough to sorta look like the fat lady's back to stay.)

Form and function.