Moulding

Rules that use the word

Articulate brick walls with buttresses and recesses. Break the long faces of brick walls with regularly spaced shallow buttresses (or recesses), so that light and shadow give scale and rhythm to a material without mouldings.

Building from the pattern book. Take the plan, the orders and the details from the builders’ pattern books, simplified for timber and for the carpenter: a symmetrical front, a central hall and stair with rooms either side, a doorway under a pediment or fanlight, and mouldings drawn to be made with the plane.

The alfiz. Frame an important arch with a rectangular moulding or band rising from its springing, so that the curved opening is set within a square field.

The alphabet of mouldings. Build every profile from a small set of elements (fillet, torus, astragal, scotia, ovolo, cavetto, cyma recta and cyma reversa), alternating curved with flat and light with shadow.

The Greek egg-and-dart. Space the eggs from centre to centre at the height of the moulding; make each egg as wide as the space between two eggs, and divide that space into three, giving the middle part to the dart and the outer parts to the shell that encloses each egg.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters What Is Architecture?, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order, The Ancient World, The Islamic World, The Americas.

A feature of Mesoamerican, Hindu Temple: Nagara (North Indian) architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Mokoshi · Monopteros · Moon gate · Mortise and tenon · Mount · Mount Meru · Mullion · Muqarnas