Glossary · N
Niche
Also called niches
A recess in a wall, usually round-headed, to hold a statue or give relief to the surface.
Rules that use the word
Make every opening a trapezoid. Give doors, windows and niches sides that lean inward, so that each opening is narrower at the top than at the bottom, and span it with a single stone lintel.
Everything turns to the qibla. Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
Muqarnas: a vault of small niches. Fill a half-dome, squinch or cornice with tiers of small concave cells, each tier corbelled forward from the one below and each cell set over the junction of two cells beneath.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Domes, Byzantium and the Early Church, The Islamic World, Gardens and Landscape, The Americas.
A feature of Mesopotamian, Andean, Persian and Mughal garden, Hindu Temple: Dravida (South Indian), Early Islamic (Umayyad and Abbasid) architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Narthex · Nave · Necking · Newel · Nosing · Noyane · Nymphaeum · Obelisk