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.
Rules · Proportion · Vaults
The heights of flat, coved and vaulted rooms
If a room is no longer than twice its breadth, make it as high as it is broad; make a coved room higher than a flat one, with a cove a quarter to a fifth of the whole height; take a vaulted room to the crown at half the sum of its length and breadth.
flat: H = B (L ≤ 2B); coved: H = B + (⅕ to ⅓)(L − B), cove = ¼–⅕ H; vaulted: H = (L + B) ⁄ 2
Stratton gives these as the rules generally agreed by earlier writers for rectangular rooms, and at once adds that the best architects never followed them so closely as to override common sense, convenience or suitability.
The vaulted-room rule is the arithmetic mean of Palladio’s three; the coved-room rule lies between the height of a flat room and that of a vaulted one.
Related rules
Proportion every step so that twice its height plus its depth equals the length of a natural pace on the level: two feet, or 24 pouces.
2 r + g = 24 pouces ≈ 65 cm (modern practice: 60–66 cm)
Hold that the beauty of the orders comes from fixed proportions that please by nature, as consonances do in music; where the ancients differ, the differences answer to circumstances such as distance and height.
Divide the whole front of the cornice into nine parts; give one of them to the height of the tympanum, measured at its centre.
tympanum height = cornice width ⁄ 9 (≈ 12½°)
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)
Divide the whole height into nineteen parts: four for the pedestal, twelve for the column, three for the entablature. Without a pedestal, divide it into fifteen, giving twelve to the column and three to the entablature.
pedestal = ⅓ column; entablature = ¼ column
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The heights of flat, coved and vaulted rooms”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/stratton-coved-room. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.