Cella
June 9, 2009 by blogtopia
Filed under Definitions
A cella (from Latin for small chamber) or naos (from the Greek for temple), is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture.
In Ancient Greek and Roman temples the cella is a room at the centre of the building, usually containing a cult image or statue (execrated by Early Christians as an "idol") representing the particular deity venerated in the temple. In addition the cella may contain a table or plinth to receive votive offerings such as votive statues, precious and semi-precious stones, helmets, spear and arrow heads, and swords. The accumulated offerings made Greek and Roman temples virtual treasuries, and many of them were indeed used as treasuries during antiquity.
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Circulation
June 9, 2009 by blogtopia
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In the field of architecture, circulation refers to the way people move through and interact with a building. In public buildings, circulation is of high importance; for example, in buildings such as museums, it is key to have a floor plan that allows continuous movement while minimizing the necessity to retrace one’s steps, allowing a visitor to see each work in a sequential, natural fashion.
Structures such as elevators, escalators, and staircases are often referred to as circulation elements, as they are positioned and designed to optimize the flow of people through a building.
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Coffer
June 8, 2009 by blogtopia
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A coffer (or coffering) in architecture, is a sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels were used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons (‘boxes"), or lacunaria ("spaces, openings"), so that a coffered ceiling can be called a lacunar ceiling. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano, which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels fillings the lacunae. Wooden coffers were first made by crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaus of the early Renaissance.
Experimentation with the possible shapes of coffering, which solve problems of mathematical tiling, or tessellation, were a feature of Islamic as well as Renaissance architecture. The more complicated problems of diminishing the scale of the individual coffers were presented by the requirements of curved surfaces of vaults and domes.
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Conch
June 8, 2009 by blogtopia
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Conch is a semi-dome, also called a "half-dome", is the term in architecture for half a dome ("cut" vertically), used to cover a semi-circular area. Similar structures occur in nature. Semi-domes are a common feature of apses in Ancient Roman and traditional church architecture, and mosques and iwans in Islamic architecture.
Conch, or the whole apse after the scallop shell often carved as decoration of the semi-dome (all shells were conches in Ancient Greek), though this is usually used for subsidiary semi-domes, rather than the one over the main apse. Small semi-domes have been often decorated in a shell shape from ancient times, as in Piero della Francesca’s Throned Madonna with saints and Federigo da Montefeltro, and the example in the gallery below.
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Coping
June 8, 2009 by blogtopia
Filed under Definitions
Coping (from cope, Latin capa), consists of the capping or covering of a wall. A splayed or wedge coping slopes in a single direction; a saddle coping slopes to either side of a central high point.
In Romanesque work copings appeared plain and flat, and projected over the wall with a throating to form a drip. In later work a steep slope was given to the weathering (mainly on the outer side), and began at the top with an astragal; in the Decorated style there were two or three sets off; and in the later Perpendicular Period these assumed a wavy section, and the coping mouldings continued round the sides, as well as at top and bottom, mitreing at the angles, as in many of the colleges at Oxford.