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.
The kancha: a walled court with one door
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.
The kancha is the unit of Inca planning at every scale: the Coricancha is a kancha, and so is a farmer’s compound. At Ollantaytambo, the best-preserved Inca town, blocks of two kanchas back to back, each opening onto a street, make a regular grid. The narrow straight streets of Cuzco, walled on both sides, are the spaces left between them.
Related rules
Divide the city into two halves, Hanan (upper) and Hurin (lower), each with its own lineages, its own shrines and its own place in the rites.
Let the four royal roads to the four quarters of the empire begin in the great square of the capital, so that the city is the centre from which the whole realm is divided.
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.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The kancha: a walled court with one door”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/inca-kancha-block. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.