Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter VIII. Of foundations
FOUNDATIONS ought to be twice as thick as the wall to be built on them; and regard in this should be had to the quality of the ground, and the largeness of the edifice; making them greater in soft soils, and very solid Where they are to sustain a considerable weight.
The bottom of the trench must be level, that the weight may press equally, and not sink more on one side than on the other, by which the walls would open. It was for this reason the antients paved the said bottom with Tiverting, and we usually put beams or planks, and build on them,
The foundations must be made sloping, that is, diminished in proportion as they rise but in such a manner, that there may be just as much set off on one side as on the other, that the middle of the wall above may fall plumb upon the middle of that below: Which also must be observed in the setting oft of the wall above ground; because the building is by this method made much stronger than if the diminutions were done any other way.
Sometimes (especially in fenny places, and where columns intervene) to lessen the expence, the foundations are not made continued, but with arches, over which the building is to be.
I is very commendable in great fabricks, to make some cavities in the thickness of the wall from the foundation to the roof, because they give vent to the winds and vapours, and cause them to do less damage to the building. They save expence, and are of no little use if there are to be circular stairs from the foundation to the top of the edifice,
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.