BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – BLUEPRINT HOME DESIGN CONSULTANTS

TUSCANY HOME DESIGNS

TUSCANY STYLE COLUMNS AND PILASTERS 
 

·        The realm of Classical column design is ripe with differences, nuances, interpretations, and the like

o       There’ve been plenty of column design players down all the years,  prominently among ‘em - Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80–70 BC- c. 15 BC) [rediscovered 1.4 millennia later], 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 way of seeing - similar, but not identical when it came to Classical design
 

o       They were all right and all wrong about column design specifically and classical design generally

§         Right that among styles, theirs is represented

§         Wrong that theirs is unique, exclusive, the ‘it’   
 

·        The author has said that a pilaster is 1/5-1/4 depth of proximate, full column design 

o       In the literature, one finds this range of estimate for a pilaster from among those who do know and those who don’t know = 1/5-1/2, 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 design within the AG's range of estimate.
  

·        Two kinds of less-than-full column design:  engaged and pilaster 

o       The former's intended to present as structural, the latter as decorative (mostly)

o       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. 

o       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

o       The philosophical premise “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 subordinate 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' (even though in Tuscany Style, for example, beams often run into walls – particularly, interiors walls – without apparent support of structure, much like Early Southwest and similarly primitive, etc.) 
 

Comment:  Tuscany Style defies this simple restatement of apparent structure when it comes to big beams in small spaces, instead, running ‘em into the wall without apparent support on the premise that the big beam carries the spaces overall and not just one at a time [he guesses, though there’s no more indication of support at the big beam’s termini in Tuscany than in its run]. 
 

o       The practical premise is two-fold:  

1.      Frustration fiesta to work a wall behind a close-by column

2.      A to-wall column - pilaster or engaged - offers a correct element or feature to terminate, 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 – or is supposed to have – 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 prissier than this, but needn't) by not spacing columns in measure that exceeds the columns' height, thereby emphasizing vertical proportion, preferably in equal dimensions.  (While this ‘intercolumniation’ [yep, it’s an actual word, actually] 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 . . . positively gargantuan)
 

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