Shaft

Rules that use the word

The fluted shaft before the Greeks. Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.

The Greek entasis: a barely perceptible swelling. Give the shaft a continuous convex curve from base to necking, departing from a straight taper by only a few hundredths of a diameter, so that the column seems to flex under its load rather than to pinch.

The tall building has three parts. Treat a tall office building as base, shaft and top: an open, accessible ground storey for shops and entrances; an indefinite stack of identical office floors expressed as one; and a distinct attic that closes the composition.

Licences to avoid. Avoid the ornaments that have no model in the hut: broken or curved pediments, pediments on the long side of a roof, orders piled storey upon storey on a church front, arches carried on columns, and twisted or cabled shafts.

Vignola’s entasis: straight for a third, curved above. Keep the lowest third of the shaft cylindrical; above it, reduce the radius along a curve found by dividing a quarter-circle and the upper two-thirds of the shaft into the same number of equal parts.

The three parts of an order. An order consists of a column (base, shaft and capital) carrying an entablature (architrave, frieze and cornice), optionally raised on a pedestal (plinth, die and cap). Each part is proportioned to the lower diameter of the column.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters Post and Lintel, Vaults, Domes, Frame and Skin, The Anatomy of an Order, The Tuscan Order, The Doric Order, The Ionic Order.

A feature of Achaemenid Persian, Romanesque, Gothic, Chicago School, Postmodernism architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Şerefe · Serliana · Setback · Sexpartite vault · Shakkei · Shaku · Shala · Shatyor