Glossary · P
Pilotis
Also called piloti
Slender columns (French: stilts) that lift a building above the ground, leaving the ground floor open. The first of Le Corbusier’s five points.
See also: Free plan, Five points
Rules that use the word
The five points of a new architecture. With a concrete frame, a house should stand on pilotis, have a free plan and a free façade, be lit by horizontal ribbon windows, and carry a garden on its flat roof.
Pilotis: lift the house off the ground. Raise the main storey on slender columns so that the ground beneath flows under the building (for circulation, cars, gardens or public space) and the rooms are lifted into light, air and view.
Housing à redents. House the population in continuous slabs raised on pilotis and folded back and forth round large open courts, so that every flat looks over the park and the ground runs unbroken beneath the buildings.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Frame and Skin, The Modern Movement, The Contemporary.
Nearby in the glossary
Piano nobile · Picturesque · Pietra dura · Pilaster · Pinnacle · Pishtaq · Pitch · Plate tracery