Architrave

Rules that use the word

The Doric module. Divide the front of a Doric temple into modules; the column’s thickness is two modules, its height with the capital fourteen, the capital one, the architrave one, and the triglyphs one and a half high and one wide.

The three parts of an order. An order consists of a column (base, shaft and capital) carrying an entablature (architrave, frieze and cornice), optionally raised on a pedestal (plinth, die and cap). Each part is proportioned to the lower diameter of the column.

The Doric column grew taller and its entablature lighter. Read the age of a Doric order from its proportions: the oldest columns are little more than four diameters high, the finest Greek ones five and a half to six and a half, the Roman seven and a half to eight; as the column rose, the architrave grew lower.

An anta as wide as the architrave it carries. Where the architrave runs on over the end of a wall, widen the wall’s end into an anta at least as broad as the architrave, so that the beam has a full bearing and the wall looks able to take it, even if the wall itself is thinner.

Four gateways at the cardinal points. Open the railing at the four cardinal points and mark each opening with a torana: two posts carrying three curved architraves with scrolled ends, crowned with Buddhist emblems.

The Greek agora: square, ringed by stoas. Make the Greek agora square, surround it with spacious colonnades, double if possible, with close-set columns and architraves of stone or marble, and walks above on an upper floor.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters Post and Lintel, Walls and Openings, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order, The Doric Order, The Ionic Order, The Corinthian Order, The Composite Order.

A feature of Buddhist India architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Araeostyle · Arboretum · Arcade · Arch brace · Arithmetic mean · Arris · Ashlar · Astragal