Glossary · B
Base
The lowest part of a column, between the shaft and the pedestal or floor. The Greek Doric has none.
See also: Attic base, Plinth
Rules that use the word
The seked of a pyramid. Specify the slope of a pyramid face by its seked: the number of palms (and fingers) by which the face runs inward for every cubit of rise. The height follows from half the base divided by the seked, times seven.
The column is a plant. Model the column on a plant of the Nile (a papyrus stem or bundle, a bundle of lotus, a palm trunk), bound at the neck with five bands, standing on a round base disc and carrying a small square abacus.
The fluted shaft before the Greeks. Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.
The obelisk: a ray of the sun in stone. Cut the obelisk from a single block of granite, square in section, tapering to about two-thirds of its base width, capped by a pyramidion, and about ten times as tall as it is wide; set them in pairs before the pylon.
The giant order. To unify a façade of two or more storeys, run a single order of pilasters or columns through all of them, from the base to the main cornice.
A ring of windows at the foot of the dome. Pierce the base of the dome with a close ring of windows between buttressing ribs, so that the shell seems to float on light rather than to rest on the arches.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters What Is Architecture?, Walls and Openings, The Arch, Domes, Proportion and Number, Frame and Skin, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order.
A feature of Achaemenid Persian, Byzantine, Hindu Temple: Nagara (North Indian), Hindu Temple: Dravida (South Indian), Ottoman, Beaux-Arts, Chicago School, Postmodernism architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Bar tracery · Barchessa · Bargeboard · Barrel vault · Basilica · Bastion · Batter · Bay