Plan the principal hall as a long rectangle entered on its short side through a porch with two columns between the side walls and a vestibule, and put a great round hearth in the centre of the hall, ringed by four columns carrying a raised roof.
Rules · Columns · Capitals · Proportion
The Minoan column tapers downward
Make the timber column narrower at the foot than at the top, set it on a stone disc, and crown it with a fat cushion capital and a square abacus.
Minoan and Mycenaean columns were of wood, painted (at Knossos, as restored, red shafts with black capitals), and they swelled upward, the reverse of later Greek practice. None survives; the form is known from stone bases, frescoes, models and the column carved on the Lion Gate. The cushion capital resembles the Doric echinus and may be one of its ancestors.
Why the taper is reversed is unknown; suggestions range from inverting tree trunks so that they would not sprout to giving a wider bearing for the beams above.
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Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Minoan column tapers downward”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/minoan-column. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.