Portico

Also called porticoes, porticos

A porch with a roof carried on columns, often with a pediment, forming the entrance of a building; described by the number of columns in front (tetrastyle, hexastyle).

Rules that use the word

Box clipped into figures and letters. Edge the beds before the portico with box, clip box into figures of animals set facing one another, and in the garden beyond cut it into many shapes, even into the letters of the owner’s name.

The villa garden: porticoes, grottoes, evergreens in rows. Give the villa garden porticoes for sun and for shade, grottoes made in imitation of nature with tufa and shells, evergreens planted in straight rows at equal distances, and hedges of box; set vines on columns over the walks.

Court and prayer hall. Build the congregational mosque as an enclosed courtyard (sahn) with a covered prayer hall (haram) on its qibla side and shaded porticoes (riwaq) on the others.

The marche. Arrange the principal spaces as a sequence along the main axis (steps, portico, vestibule, great hall, and beyond) so that the visitor’s progress through the building is itself the composition.

The temple front on the house. Give the front of a country house a portico with a pediment, as the ancients did, for it shows the entrance, gives grandeur, and makes a place to display the owner’s arms.

Steady a great rotunda with projecting features. Do not leave a large circular building as a bare cylinder: steady it with features that break the curve and fix its axes: a portico, stairs, a projecting bay or a recess on the axis.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters Domes, Stairs, The Ionic Order, The Corinthian Order, The Temple, The Ancient World, The Islamic World, Renaissance and Baroque.

A feature of Achaemenid Persian, Ancient Roman, Ottoman, Palladian, Neoclassical, Beaux-Arts architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Pointed architecture · Polygonal masonry · Polylobed arch · Porch · Post-and-lintel · Pozzolana · Pradakshina · Praecinctio