Rules · Plans · Façades · Vaults
Enclose the central mountain in rectangular galleries, one within the other, each on a higher terrace, with gopuras at the cardinal points and pavilions at the corners.
Angkor Wat: galleries ≈ 187 × 215 m, 100 × 115 m, 60 × 60 m
Khmer builders developed the long stone gallery, roofed with a corbelled vault and lined with pillars, into an architecture of processional movement. At Angkor Wat the outer gallery carries several hundred metres of continuous bas-relief (the battles of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, the heavens and hells), and each inner gallery stands higher than the last, until the steep stairs of the central pyramid lead to the upper court and the quincunx.
Read the diagram from the centre outward: Brahmā at the heart, then a ring of the gods, a ring of human concerns, and on the outside the lesser spirits; the holiest function goes at the centre and the most worldly at the edge.
81 padas = 9 (Brahmā) + 16 + 24 + 32
Build the state temple as a stepped mountain with five towers in a quincunx (one at the centre and four at the corners), representing the five peaks of Mount Meru, surrounded by walls and a moat for the mountains and ocean that ring the world.
Angkor Wat reverses the usual eastward orientation: its entrance, causeway and principal approach face west.
Divide the ground inside the walls by embankments into a regular grid of blocks, each with its ponds and its raised mounds for houses.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Concentric galleries rising in terraces”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/khmer-galleries. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.