To make a square of half the area of another, join the mid-points of its sides: the rotated square so drawn has exactly half the area. Repeat to halve again.
side of inscribed square = s ⁄ √2 · area = ½ s²
The market square with its arcades and hall
Leave one block of the grid open as the market square; surround it with houses standing on arcades, so that the market may be held under cover on all four sides; put the market hall in the middle, with the standard measures.
A bastide lived by its market, which the founding charter granted along with yearly fairs, and the square was its purpose made visible. The arcades round it (cornières in the south-west, from the corners where the streets enter under them) are part of the houses: each house on the square gives up its ground-floor frontage to a public walk and builds its upper storeys over it.
The hall in the middle, open on all sides under a great roof, sheltered the stalls and kept the lord’s measures for grain, against which every sale was checked. Monpazier’s square, with its arcades and its later hall, is the best preserved.
Related rules
End the choir in a semicircle of piers; wrap an aisle (the ambulatory) around it, and open a ring of chapels off the ambulatory, each with its own altar and windows, so that the east end steps down in tiers of roofs and buttresses.
Put the hall at the heart of the house and enter it at one end, by a passage running through the house from front door to back door, screened from the hall. Open the buttery, the pantry and, between them, the way to the kitchen off that passage, at the hall’s lower end; put the family’s parlour, and the great chamber over it, beyond the hall’s upper end, where the high table stands.
Build the monastery, if possible, so that everything it needs (water, a mill, a garden and the various crafts) is inside the enclosure, so that the monks need not wander outside, which does their souls no good; and set a wise old monk at the gate, with a cell beside it.
Let all the monks sleep in one place if their number allows, each in his own bed, clothed and ready to rise, with a light burning until morning; place the dormitory where they can go straight to the church for the night office.
Receive every guest as Christ, the poor and pilgrims with the greatest care; give the abbot and the guests a kitchen of their own, so that guests arriving at unexpected hours do not disturb the brothers; lodge them in a guest house apart, in the care of a God-fearing brother.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The market square with its arcades and hall”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/bastide-square. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.