To unify a façade of two or more storeys, run a single order of pilasters or columns through all of them, from the base to the main cornice.
The temple front on the house
Give the front of a country house a portico with a pediment, as the ancients did, for it shows the entrance, gives grandeur, and makes a place to display the owner’s arms.
Palladio believed, wrongly as it turned out, that ancient houses had temple fronts; the belief gave the villa its most recognisable feature and, through his English and American followers, put porticoes on houses, banks and capitols across the world.
Related rules
Take the plan, the orders and the details from the builders’ pattern books, simplified for timber and for the carpenter: a symmetrical front, a central hall and stair with rooms either side, a doorway under a pediment or fanlight, and mouldings drawn to be made with the plane.
Judge every building against the first shelter: four trees for columns, branches laid across them for the entablature, and a pitched roof whose end makes the pediment. These three are the essential parts; all else is added.
Let columns stand free, round and upright, carrying a straight entablature directly; do not engage them in walls, replace them with pilasters, or set them on pedestals.
Keep the lowest third of the shaft cylindrical; above it, reduce the radius along a curve found by dividing a quarter-circle and the upper two-thirds of the shaft into the same number of equal parts.
r(k) = R · cos(α·k), cos α = r_top ⁄ R, k = 0…1 over the upper ⅔
An order consists of a column (base, shaft and capital) carrying an entablature (architrave, frieze and cornice), optionally raised on a pedestal (plinth, die and cap). Each part is proportioned to the lower diameter of the column.
order = [pedestal] + column(base, shaft, capital) + entablature(architrave, frieze, cornice)
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The temple front on the house”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/palladio-villa-portico. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.