Divide each wall into bays with pilaster strips and end each bay in a semicircular gable, the zakomara, that follows the curve of the barrel vault behind it; shape the roof to the gables.
usually 3 zakomary per façade, one per bay
Rules · Materials · Walls · Structure
The log frame
Build the house of whole logs laid horizontally and notched into one another at the corners, their ends left projecting; stop the joints with moss; roof it with boards or birch bark on a steep pitch; raise the living room on a lower storey where the ground is damp.
The srub, a square frame of logs, was the module of Russian building, from the peasant’s izba to the tented churches of the north. Because its size was fixed by the length of a good log, larger buildings were made by joining several frames. Olearius describes the moss in the joints and a market in Moscow where complete frames were sold, numbered, to be carried away and set up in a day or two: a rapid answer to the fires that repeatedly destroyed the wooden city.
Related rules
Instead of a dome, crown the church with a tall octagonal pyramid of masonry (the shatyor, or tent) set on an octagon over the square body, with kokoshniki at the transitions and a small cupola at the top.
Ascension, Kolomenskoye (1532): ≈ 62 m high; cube → octagon → tent → cupola
Set the kremlin on the high ground where two rivers meet, so that water guards two sides; wall it with towers at the corners and gates, dig a moat along the landward side, and put within it the cathedral, the prince’s palace and the metropolitan’s court.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The log frame”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/izba-srub. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.