Where the ground is flat and the water lies deep, raise it from wells by wheels into tanks and channels, and lay the garden out in regular, symmetrical plots round them, with walks, beds of flowers and trees in order.
Minarets that frame, not touch
Stand the minarets free at the corners of the plinth, so that they frame the tomb in every view without crowding it.
The four minarets of the Taj, about 40 metres high, are not needed for the call to prayer (the complex has its own mosque) but as the corners of an invisible cube that contains the tomb. They are set at the very edges of the plinth, far enough from the tomb to leave clear sky between. They are often said to lean very slightly outward, so that in an earthquake they would fall away from the tomb; the model lets you exaggerate the tilt to see the effect on the silhouette.
Related rules
Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Set the iwan arch in a tall rectangular screen that rises above the roofline, framed by bands of inscription and flanked by minarets.
Build two domes, one above the other: an inner shell proportioned to the room below and an outer shell raised on a tall drum and proportioned to the city outside.
outer crown ≫ inner crown; the gap may be a third of the total height
Balance the tomb so that the dome with its finial rises as high above the pishtaq as the pishtaq rises above the plinth, and let every element be answered by its mirror image on both axes.
pishtaq ≈ dome + finial ≈ 33–35 m; total ≈ 73 m (approximate)
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Minarets that frame, not touch”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/taj-minarets. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.