Orient the principal axis of the monument on the rising or setting of the sun at a solstice, so that the architecture frames it.
Open the house to the north wind
Turn the principal rooms and the columned portico of a house to face north, towards the cool prevailing wind, and keep the walls to the south and west blank against the sun.
In Egypt the steady wind blows from the north, down the Nile valley, and the texts of the dead wish for the sweet breath of the north wind as a blessing. In the great houses of Kahun, and again in the villas of Amarna four centuries later, the master’s hall opens by a portico onto a court on its north side, so that the portico is in shade and catches the breeze. The rule is read from the plans; no Egyptian treatise states it.
Related rules
Arrange the temple on a single axis (pylon, open court, hypostyle hall, sanctuary) so that at each threshold the floor rises, the roof descends and the light diminishes, until the god’s shrine is reached in darkness.
In a great columned hall make the columns of the central aisle taller than the rest, and fill the difference in height with stone grilles, so that light enters high up over the side aisles.
Give the columns of the tall, clerestory-lit central aisle open papyrus capitals and those of the lower aisles closed buds.
Cut the obelisk from a single block of granite, square in section, tapering to about two-thirds of its base width, capped by a pyramidion, and about ten times as tall as it is wide; set them in pairs before the pylon.
height ≈ 9–11 × base width
Build the town for a royal pyramid in one campaign, as a walled rectangle on a grid of straight streets; wall off the quarter of the labourers’ small houses from the quarter of the officials’ mansions, and give each rank a standard house.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Open the house to the north wind”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/north-wind-portico. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.