Rules · Walls · Materials · Plans
Build the house on a levelled terrace with a socle of rubble stone, walls of mud brick in a timber frame, and a flat roof of reeds and clay; store oil and wine in the basement rooms against the hill.
The houses excavated just outside the walls of Mycenae were substantial two-storey buildings set on terraces cut into the slope, their lower storeys used as storerooms and workshops; one held large jars of oil, another the clay tablets and sealings of palace business. Their upper floors, of mud brick in timber frames, burned in the destructions of the thirteenth century BC.
In a bonded masonry wall the courses above an opening corbel over it of their own accord, so the lintel carries roughly the triangle of wall with sides rising at 60° from its ends; everything above that triangle arches onto the jambs.
load ≈ equilateral triangle on the span: W ≈ 0.43 · L² · t · ρ g
Weight for weight, timber is many times stronger in bending than stone; long spans in trabeated buildings are therefore roofed with timber beams resting on stone walls and columns.
bending strength ÷ density: oak ≈ 70 · limestone ≈ 3 (kPa per kg ⁄ m³)
Over a large lintel leave a triangular opening by corbelling the courses on either side, so that the wall’s weight passes to the jambs; close the triangle with a thin slab.
Build fortification walls of huge, roughly shaped limestone blocks, with small stones packed into the gaps between them; reserve cut ashlar for gates and façades.
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.
Wall the whole hill; put the ruler’s megaron on its summit, reached by a ramp from the main gate; keep stores, shrines and the ancestral graves inside the walls, and bring water within reach by a hidden stair.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Houses on terraces: stone below, brick above”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/mycenaean-house. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.