Advantages and disadvantages of Doric

Advantages and disadvantages of Doric

Austere

Masculine

Square metopes but tryglyphs over columns and a column in the corners meant juggling the inter – column gaps.

According to Vitruvius, a Roman engineer for both Julius Caesar and Augustus, the masculine seeming Doric column ‘s diameter -to- height ratio is based on the relationship between foot length and height in a man; whereas the slenderer Ionic column diameter -to- height ratio is based on the foot length -to- height ratio in a woman:

” As they wished to erect this temple with columns, and had not a knowledge of the proper proportions of them, nor knew the way in which they ought to be constructed, so as at the same time to be both fit to carry the superincumbent weight, and to produce a beautiful effect, they measured a man ‘s foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height, including the capital, six times the thickness of the shaft, measured at the base. Thus the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty, from the human figure.”

Typical example of the Doric order is the Temple of Aphaia on the island of Aegina–a temple probably erected about 480 BC

The channels or flutes in our typical column are twenty in number. More rarely we find sixteen; much more rarely larger multiples of four. These channels are so placed that one comes directly under the middle of each face of the capital.

A triglyph is placed over the center of each column and over the center of each intercolumniation. But at the corners of the buildings the intercolumniations are diminished, with the result that the corner triglyphs do not stand over the centers of the corner columns, but farther out.

www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03/hgrkr10.txt

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