Joint (architecture)

“ It had, perhaps, a row of arches down the middle, like the great hall of the palace of Blois, said to be of the thirteenth century, or huge kingposts supporting the ties between rafters, which in that case may have been as long as those of the later roof. The present roof, work of the fourteenth century, marks the beginning of a change in the style of architecture that accompanied and caused great changes in furniture and household woodwork. ”

“ The common plaster cornice placed to unite walls and ceiling, in our ordinary houses, is a concession (on the part even of the jerriest of builders) to the æsthetic sense. We get the decorated frieze in architecture in obedience to the same demand, though originally a necessary feature of lintel construction, as we have seen, from the days of the festal garland hung around the eaves of the classic house, to its perpetuation in stone in so many varieties. ”

“ In architecture mere forms apart from their functional offices and relations are not enough to enable us to apprehend the distinctive characteristics of styles. Semicircular forms instead of straight beams may, for instance, be used to bridge the spaces between the upright supports of a building without a result which would constitute between a building employing the latter form and one employing the former, a difference of architectural style. ”

“ It is obvious that the same treatment cannot well be given to the walls of a church, a theatre, a concert or an assembly room, and a private residence, though it often is done. Nor can an interior, like that of a public hall or palace, that may have such architectural features as columns, pilasters, and well-marked panellings, either of marble, stone, or of wood construction, be treated in a similar manner to that which may be proper for the walls of a room which may be devoid of any architectural features. ”

“ This expedient of continued series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings, of which, repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most familiar forms of our furniture, it is impossible altogether to weary. Now, it is evident that the architect has choice of two types of form, each properly associated with its own kind of interest or decoration: the square, or greatest area, to be chosen especially when the surface is to be the subject of thought ”

“ Still I think the law of domestic architecture at least should be 'from within out.' For the sake of the external appearance it ought not to be necessary to make the rooms higher or lower than we want them for use, neither larger nor more irregular in shape. It ought not to be necessary to build crooked chimneys for the sake of a dignified standing on the roof, or to make a pretense of a window where none is needed. ”

“ We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection of these members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring always to keep the simplicity of our first arrangement in view; for protective architecture has indeed no other members than these, unless flooring and paving be considered architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a roof ”

“ Much the same fashion of architecture is popular nowadays, but people pay more attention to comfort. The governor's pillars were ingeniously disposed so as to darken all the windows looking that way, whether in the double parlours on the first floor, the bed-chambers on the second, or the big ballroom over the entire house on the third. ”

“ Think how much more beautiful city architecture will now be! The houses, instead of being built round a square, could be set in the middle of it, with only an alleyway for ventilation, and grasses, trees, and flowers all about the outside. Every tenth block would contain the kitchen and laundry and clothing-house ”

“ A comparison, for example, of the plans of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (Fig. 11, h) and of the Basilica of Constantine (Fig. 58) shows at once a radical difference in constructive principle between the two edifices, and hence a difference of style.
STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES. All architecture is based on one or more of three fundamental structural principles; that of the lintel, of the arch or vault, and of the truss. The principle of the lintel is that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more vertical supports. ”

“ The front of a house should be the most imposing and finished in its architecture of any one of its parts; and unless some motive of greater convenience control otherwise, its entrance the most highly wrought, as indicating the luxury of the establishment—for even the humblest habitations have their luxuries. The side rooms, or more usually occupied apartments, require less pretension in both architectural effect and finish, and should wear a more subdued appearance ”

“ They are sharply and unmistakably divided into the parts that every building needs to be a work of architecture, the members that mark the division are carefully and successfully adjusted with reference to their place and their scale, and the treatment of the different parts is so varied as to avoid both monotony and miscellany. ”

“ Here was architecture in its essence: the covering-in of the top, the erecting of the wall, was the work of barrow-men. The carpenter, the craftsman was required for laying on the beams, and making the terrace water-tight. Within, the roof is as important as without; for as it is upon the roof that depends the durability, and I may say, solidity of the structure, so in the roof consists the chief embellishment of the apartment.
Nothing is weak—nothing frittered away. ”

“ The object, in addition to our own designs, has been to apply practical hints, gathered from other structures in use, which have seemed appropriate for a work of the limited extent here offered, and that may serve to improve the taste of all such as, in building useful structures, desire to embellish their farms and estates in an agreeable style of home architecture, at once pleasant to the eye, and convenient in their arrangement. ”

“ We may suppose that an architect has a porch to design, and that the owner of the house does not have a great deal of money to put in it. There are four turned columns, a cornice, with a rafter finish, and underneath, a space in which may be inserted a small band of inexpensive scroll-work. A knowledge of the earlier architecture comes to his assistance in a wonderful way. For the turning on the columns the architect may select that from a column of the early English Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century. ”

“ In each bay of the ground story is a deep round-arched rectangular recess in the thickness of the wall, and over each of these an open gallery with two colonnettes and two small jamb pilasters carrying an entablature over each of the lateral spaces so formed, and an arch over the central one, an early instance of a form of compound opening that was much used in the architecture of the later Renaissance. ”

“ Looking at the matter in the broadest possible way, it may be said that the building impulse throughout the ages has expressed itself in two fundamentally different types of structure: that in which the architecture—and even the ornament—is one with the engineering; and that in which the two elements are separable, not in thought alone, but in fact. For brevity let us name that manner of building in which the architecture is the construction, Inherent architecture, and that manner in which the two are separable Incrusted architecture. ”

“ Everything indeed was done to make these houses, while identical on the exterior, full of interest and refinement within. In this way they satisfied the ideals of the eighteenth century gentleman for whom they were designed.
All these houses indeed of the two Wood’s and the fine shapes into which they combined them seem to show that in times of good taste in the world it is almost as impossible to do wrong in architecture as in times of bad taste it is to do right. ”

“ One is astonished to see how often the actual balance of a room is upset by the careless placing of electric fixtures. Therefore keep in mind when deciding upon the lighting of a room the following points: first, fixtures must follow in line style of architecture and furniture; second, the position of fixtures on walls must carry out the architect's scheme of proportion, line and balance; third, the material used in fixtures—brass, gilded wood, glass or wrought iron—must contribute to the decorator's scheme of line and colour ”

“ It is not so much that the walls are thin, as that they have disappeared: there are no walls—only a series of piers dividing windows, the opening filled with glass being much greater, if measured along a horizontal line running through the windows, than is the extent of the solid masonry. You see at once wherein there is an excuse for the saying “a wall of glass with a roof of stone.” But there is more than this: the primary object of the designer has been to treat his construction as the main inspiration of his design. ”

“ Other first signs of the Transition are the diagonal or catercornered fireplace, the hipped or "pyramid" roof, the gambrel roof, and the open-well stairs, which mount up the sides of a room—an arrangement which Britons at home complained of as "wasters of space." In short, it may be said that while these features may earmark a building as of the Transition, they are only thus when combined with certain house-forms and floor plans. A diagonal fireplace by itself is no criterion of a building being Transitional. ”

“ A small undulation of surface, or embarrassment of road, makes large difference in the portability of masses, and of consequence, in the breadth of the possible intercolumniation, the solidity of the column, and the whole scale of the building. Again, in a hill-country, architecture can be important only by position, in a level country only by bulk. ”

“ The chief innovation in the design was the wide separation of the interior stone dome from the lofty exterior decorative cupola and lantern of wood, this separation being designed to meet the conflicting demands of internal and external effect. To the same architect is due the formal monotony of the Place Vendôme, all the houses surrounding it being treated with a uniform architecture of colossal pilasters, at once monumental and inappropriate. ”

“ As regards the Exterior portion, Gateways, Porches, Windows, Gables, Parapets, Chimneys, Finials, &c., are all illustrated by numerous examples. Garden architecture is also touched upon. In illustration of the treatment of Interiors of Houses, many specimens of Panelling, Screens, Doorways, Chimney-pieces, Ceilings, Staircases, Window-glass, etc., are given. A chapter is devoted to John Thorpe's drawings, and to the light which they throw upon the designing of houses of the period. ”

“ There is indeed no development of lines or of masses, and no organized relation of parts is aimed at. The openings are not grouped or spaced so as to tell the story of the interior, nor so as to bear any reference to each other, nor are the structural features which every building must possess brought out by modelling; nor is the ornament applied{66} to accentuate the structural features, nor is it designed with reference either to its place or to its function as ornament. ”

“ Yet a square house is not so agreeable to the eye as an oblong. Thus, a house should stand somewhat broader on one front than on another. It should also be relieved from an appearance of monotony and tameness, by one or more wings; and such wings should, at their junction with the main building, retreat or advance a sufficient distance from a continuous line, as to relieve it effectually from an appearance of stiffness, and show a different character of occupation from that of the main structure. ”

“ If, therefore, in the case of the temple of classical architecture it is the external form which is of most importance, and we find it remaining by means of the colonnades more independent of the interior construction, romantic architecture presents a contrast to this not merely in the fact that the interior of the building is more essentially important, for the reason that the whole purports to be simply an enclosure, but also in this, that the interior permeates the very form of the exterior throughout, and determines its specific shape and mode of articulation. ”

“ On the business streets the houses are generally two stories, the merchant living above the store. The public buildings are now being constructed of brick and stone and modeled after the buildings of America and Europe. But returning to the native architecture—the house is really little more than a frame, for the dividing walls are sliding screens, and, except in cold weather, the outside walls are taken out during the day. ”

“ There is scarcely a principle or part in architecture that has not its natural parallel—walls, floors, towers, doors and hinges, porches, eaves, and windows; thatch, slates, and tiles, girders, ties, and buttresses, bridges, dams, the pyramid, and even mortar, paint, and varnish, are all there. ”

“ There the design ought to be subordinate to the general effect of the architecture. The wall is not to be considered merely as a convenient place on which to plaster a picture, its structural purpose must be regarded, and this cannot be expressed if the design or treatment be purely pictorial—if vague perspective distances and strong foreground accents be used without symmetry or order, except that order which governs itself alone. ”