Arthur Stratton, Elements of Form & Design (1925)

A hundred plates of plans, sections and elevations that sort classical design by its elementary shapes (the circle, the square, the octagon, the rectangle, the “D”) and then by the parts a building is made of: corridors, vestibules, staircases, loggias, façades, porticoes, steps, arches, screens and grottoes.

Arthur Stratton wrote the book for students, out of his experience of teaching, and Professor A. E. Richardson contributed a foreword. Its argument is that design begins with the plan and with a small number of geometrical figures, and that each figure brings with it accepted ways of covering, lighting and composing it in section and elevation. A circular plan asks for a dome lit through an eye or a drum; a square room is happiest as a cube; a corridor should be broken into bays as long as it is wide; a staircase must be placed for its approach, its axis and its light.

The plates are diagrams rather than records: most show types distilled from many buildings, drawn to comparable scales, with a smaller number of named examples, chiefly English and French work of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Wren, Hawksmoor, Gibbs, Adam, Chambers, Soane, Percier and Fontaine, Schinkel) set beside Roman models. Each Series opens with a short essay, most continue with notes on the individual plates, and most end with a list of reference books.

The approach owes much to J. N. L. Durand, whom Stratton cites, and to the teaching of the École des Beaux-Arts: a repertory of elements to be combined on axes. The Library prints the text from the archive.org scan of the first edition. The plates and their captions are not reproduced; the live figures are this book’s own.

The book, part by part

I Preface, Foreword and Introduction

Why a student should learn elementary forms before inventing; geometry, the plan and symmetry about axes as the basis of design; the reference books.

Fig. 1Elementary forms combined on axes, after Durand. Open in Models ↗

Rules: Begin with the plan, on a geometrical basis

II Series I–V: Circular, square, “D” and octagonal plans

The circle and its dome, peristyle and steadying features; the circle over the square by means of pendentives; the square hall and the cube; the Roman “D” or tribune plan, the exedra and the ellipse; octagonal pavilions and interiors.

Fig. 2Plate XII: the dome carried on pendentives. Open in Models ↗

Rules: Steady a great rotunda with projecting features · The square room as a cube · The “D” plan for places of assembly · The ellipse belongs inside

III Series VI–IX: Rectangular rooms, corridors, vestibules and staircases

Rooms with flat, coved, vaulted and domed ceilings, colonnades, screens and galleries; corridors in bays; vestibules for foot and wheeled traffic and the vaulted loggia; staircases with straight, returned, circular and elliptical flights.

Rules: The heights of flat, coved and vaulted rooms · Break a corridor into bays · Where to put the staircase

IV Series X–XVI: Pavilions, façades and features

Open halls and pavilions; façades of one and two principal storeys; porticoes as frontispieces and approaches; external steps; triumphal arches, gateways and porches; screens and colonnades; grottoes.

Rules: The three purposes of a portico

Rules drawn from Elements of Form & Design

Begin with the plan, on a geometrical basis

Compose from the plan: base it on the elemental figures (circle, square, rectangle and their derivatives), arrange its parts symmetrically about axes, and develop section and elevation from it together.

Steady a great rotunda with projecting features

Do not leave a large circular building as a bare cylinder: steady it with features that break the curve and fix its axes: a portico, stairs, a projecting bay or a recess on the axis.

The square room as a cube

Make a simple square room as high as it is wide, so that it encloses a cube; for oblong rooms the double cube (twice as long as it is wide and high) is satisfactory in almost any circumstances.

The “D” plan for places of assembly

For a hall of assembly use the “D” or tribune plan, a half-circle closed by a straight side: it gives ample room to the audience, a central place to the speaker and scope for display in the architecture.

The ellipse belongs inside

Use the elliptical plan chiefly for interiors, where the whole curve is seen at once; on the outside of any but a very large building its changing curvature looks like a distorted circle, and the circle is better.

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

Break a corridor into bays

Keep a corridor’s height to no more than one and a half times its width, and divide its length into bays about as long as it is wide, marked by pilasters and by the divisions of the ceiling or vault.

H ≤ 1½ W; bay ≈ W

Where to put the staircase

Place the staircase by three tests: its relation to the principal rooms it serves; keeping the main axial communications free of obstruction; and light, for itself and, as a well of light, for the corridors and vestibules around it.

The three purposes of a portico

Give a portico three jobs: to shelter those who arrive, to mark the main entrance, and to give the building dignity and character with its depth of light and shade; proportion it, as a rule, like a temple front.