The Textbook of Architecture

The Cabinet of Models

The primitive hut

Laugier (1753): four living trees for columns, branches laid across for the entablature, a pitched roof for the pediment. Beside them stand the same parts in stone.

The primitive hut Open in Models ↗

Illustrates: Neoclassical

The rules it illustrates

The primitive hut. Judge every building against the first shelter: four trees for columns, branches laid across them for the entablature, and a pitched roof whose end makes the pediment. These three are the essential parts; all else is added.

The four elements. Understand every building as a combination of four elements (the hearth, the roof on its supports, the enclosure and the mound), each descended from a craft: ceramics, carpentry, weaving and masonry.

Where it appears in the book

In the styles Neoclassical.

In the chapters Enlightenment and Revival.