Give doors, windows and niches sides that lean inward, so that each opening is narrower at the top than at the bottom, and span it with a single stone lintel.
top width ≈ ⅘ of bottom width
Rules · Doors & windows · Ornament · Use
Double the jamb to mark rank
Frame the doorway of a temple, palace or royal precinct with a second, larger recessed trapezoid, so that the opening steps back in two planes; keep the single jamb for ordinary buildings.
Double-jamb doorways (and occasionally triple ones) are found at the entrances to the most important precincts: at Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo and in Cuzco. They are a hierarchy of openings written in the wall itself, the Inca equivalent of an order of columns framing a door.
Related rules
Settle the lords of every province in a ward of the capital lying on the side of the city toward their own province, so that the city holds the order of the whole empire.
Surround the great square with the houses of the kings, each opening onto it by a great hall large enough to hold a festival under cover when it rains.
Build every household, palace and temple as a kancha: a rectangular walled enclosure with a single doorway to the street, its single-room houses set against the walls and facing a central court; pair the kanchas back to back to make the blocks of the town.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Double the jamb to mark rank”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/double-jamb. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.