Glossary · F
Frieze
The middle part of the entablature, between architrave and cornice. Plain or carved with a continuous relief in the Ionic and Corinthian; divided into triglyphs and metopes in the Doric.
See also: Entablature, Triglyph
Rules that use the word
The Doric corner conflict. A Doric frieze cannot obey all three of its rules at a corner: triglyphs over the column axes, a triglyph turning the corner, and metopes as broad as they are high. One of them must give way.
Contract the corner bays. To end the frieze with a triglyph at the corner and keep every metope square, move the corner column inward: make the last intercolumniation narrower than the others by the amount the corner triglyph is displaced.
Vitruvius’s half-metope. Keep every triglyph centred over a column and every intercolumniation equal, and finish the frieze at the corner with a half-metope half a module 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.
Lombard bands and pilaster strips. Articulate plain rubble walls outside with shallow vertical strips (lesenes) linked at the top by a frieze of small round arches on corbels: the Lombard band.
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, Columns in Company.
A feature of Ancient Greek architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Four-iwan plan · Free façade · Free plan · Frequency · Functionalism · Fusuma · Gable · Gablet