Gable

Rules that use the word

Let the roofline follow the vaults. Divide each wall into bays with pilaster strips and end each bay in a semicircular gable, the zakomara, that follows the curve of the barrel vault behind it; shape the roof to the gables.

Tiers of kokoshniki. Mount from the walls to the drum in stepped tiers of decorative gables with pointed ogee heads, the kokoshniki, each tier set back and narrower than the one below, so that the body of the church rises into its domes in a pyramid of arches.

The roof declares the rank. Give the hipped roof (wudian) to the highest halls, the hip-and-gable (xieshan) to the next, and the gabled roofs, overhanging (xuanshan) and flush (yingshan), to lesser buildings and houses; double the eaves for the very highest.

The bay window. Let the principal room of the front stand out in a bay window, canted or square, under its own gable: more light, a view along the street as well as across it, and a front that shows where the best room is.

Shinmei-zukuri: the style of Ise. Build the sanctuary of unpainted cypress on posts set directly in the ground, with a raised floor and veranda, a straight thatched gable roof entered on the long side, crossed finials (chigi) and ridge billets (katsuogi), and a free-standing post at each gable carrying the ridge.

The steep roof. Give a pointed building a steep roof, the gable close to an equilateral triangle, which throws off rain and snow and completes the vertical character of the design.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters The Roof, The Temple, Byzantium and the Early Church, Romanesque and Gothic, South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea, The House in England and America.

A feature of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Gothic, Tudor, Victorian architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Frequency · Frieze · Functionalism · Fusuma · Gablet · Gallery · Gambrel · Garbhagriha