Aisle

Rules that use the word

Raise the central aisle and light it from above. In a great columned hall make the columns of the central aisle taller than the rest, and fill the difference in height with stone grilles, so that light enters high up over the side aisles.

Open flowers in the light, buds in the shade. Give the columns of the tall, clerestory-lit central aisle open papyrus capitals and those of the lower aisles closed buds.

Light the nave from above the aisles. Raise the central nave above the lean-to roofs of the aisles and pierce the upper walls with a row of windows, the clerestory, so that the middle of a wide hall is lit from high on both sides.

Buttress the dome where the semidomes cannot. Where no semidome takes the thrust of the dome, on the north and south, carry it across the aisles to massive buttress piers that rise above the roofs, and fill the great arches with thin walls pierced by windows.

Concentrate the loads; fill the rest with glass. Gather the weight and thrust of the vaults onto a few points by ribs, carry them down piers and out across the aisles by flying buttresses to external buttress piers, and the wall between the supports carries almost nothing, so it can be opened into windows.

Arcade, triforium, clerestory. Divide the elevation of the nave into three storeys: a tall arcade opening into the aisles, a low triforium passage in the thickness of the wall against the aisle roof, and a clerestory of large windows reaching up into the vault.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters Post and Lintel, Walls and Openings, Vaults, Byzantium and the Early Church, Romanesque and Gothic, The Islamic World, South and Southeast Asia, Renaissance and Baroque.

A feature of Ancient Egyptian, Early Christian, Early Islamic (Umayyad and Abbasid) architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Ad triangulum · Adhishthana · Aedicule · Agora · Alae · Alfarda · Alfiz · Allée