Glossary · M
Module
The unit of measure from which all parts of an order are proportioned: usually the lower diameter of the column (D), or half of it, the radius (M), as in Vitruvius’s Doric and all of Vignola.
See also: Order
Rules that use the word
Everything is measured in cai and fen. Take the section of the standard timber, the cai, as the module of the building: it is 15 fen high and 10 fen wide, and every member is dimensioned in fen.
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 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.
Column heights in modules. Make the Tuscan column 14 modules high, the Doric 16, the Ionic 18, and the Corinthian and Composite 20, the module being half the lower diameter.
Commensurability. Let every part of a building be measured by the same unit and relate to the whole by simple whole-number ratios, so that one module generates all its dimensions.
The crossing square as module. Let the square of the crossing set the measure of the whole church: the nave and transept arms are multiples of it, each nave bay is a square of the same size, and each aisle bay a square one quarter its area.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters What Is Architecture?, Post and Lintel, Proportion and Number, Frame and Skin, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order, The Doric Order, The Corinthian Order.
A feature of Japanese, Renaissance architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Minaret · Minbar · Mingjian · Modillion · Modulor · Mokoshi · Monopteros · Moon gate