Rules · Roofs · Ornament · Façades
Set urns or statues on the pedestals of a balustrade crowning a front, over the piers and the angles, so that the skyline is broken at regular intervals.
Front a basilican church with two storeys of the order: the lower as wide as nave and chapels, the upper as wide as the nave alone, joined by scrolls and crowned by a pediment.
Il Gesù (reconstructed): lower ≈ 34 m wide, upper ≈ 20 m; scrolls fill the difference
Build up a façade in layers: let the wall advance in stages towards the central bay, double the pilasters or columns as it advances, and break the entablature forward over every support.
Mark the main door by setting a segmental pediment inside a larger triangular one, or by breaking the pediment open to hold a cartouche or statue.
To unify a façade of two or more storeys, run a single order of pilasters or columns through all of them, from the base to the main cornice.
Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Urns and statues on the balustrade”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/balustrade-ornaments. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.