Glossary · P
Pinnacle
Also called pinnacles, Fiale
A small turret-like termination, square in plan with a steep pyramidal spire, crowning a buttress; its weight helps to steady the pier.
Rules that use the word
The pinnacle is a weight. Load the top of a buttress pier with a heavy pinnacle: the added weight steepens the resultant of the flyer’s thrust and the pier’s own weight, keeping it well inside the base of the pier.
A pinnacle from one square. Draw a square the width of the pinnacle; inscribe a second square on the mid-points of its sides, and a third on the mid-points of the second. Turned back into line, the squares give the widths of the body, its panels and the spire; every height is a multiple of the first side.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Romanesque and Gothic, Enlightenment and Revival.
A feature of Gothic, Gothic Revival architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Picturesque · Pietra dura · Pilaster · Pilotis · Pishtaq · Pitch · Plate tracery · Pleaching