Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
turn the upstanding wall plan thereon seems obvious. Beyond this however the
existence or nature of project drawings could well be uncertain; and this question
could be interrelated with the existence of full scale versions of elevation details
inscribed on standing walls.
Although the intention in this study is to report matters of fact, the following
developments of the present matter are here noted.
Partly due to this apparent lack of preparatory drawing out for Classical Greek
temple building a distinctively new outline has been developed of the procedure
for building these temples. h e protagonist in this has been J. Coulton (v “Towards
Understanding Greek Temple Design,” BSA 10, 1975, pp. 59-100; Greek Archi-
tects at Work, pp. 51-73; Incomplete Preliminary Planning in Greek Architecture
in Dessin d'Architecture pp. 103-122 etc.). h is view proposes that the design of
Classical Greek temples was one of the mental perceptions and the mental arrange-
ment of inter-connected proportions consequent on choices of basic schemes,
e.g. a peristasis of 6 × 13 columns. In this way the design of the Greek temple
was worked out in the head, not on the drawing board; and among a group with
specialised knowledge and experience it was perhaps better conveyed in words
(specii cations) than in drawings.
As a i rst step on this path, it was proposed that details of the design were
incomplete when construction of the temple began, and were only i nally achieved
by and through the construction. In short far from the necessity of design draw-
ings to guide the construction of Greek temples, it was the process of construction
which was necessary to i nalise the design.
h is is not the juncture to discuss in detail these far reaching assertions; however
something must be said of them. So far as is evident the practice has always been
to design a building on the basis of its plan—and it is the plan which is set out on
the ground to control the construction. It is possible that when the construction of
the building is begun according to the plan set out, the exact elevation is not yet
clearly dei ned and can only take shape in the process of construction. h us it is
reasonably possible that you begin the construction of an incompletely designed
temple by i rst building the fabric up to the stylobate level in accordance with
the designed plan, and then work out the details of the elevation in the process
of further construction. However you do not proceed with the construction of an
incompletely designed temple by i rst building the peristasis and then working out
the plan of the sekos in relation to it (or, if you so wish,
vice versa
).
h is is attested in Coulton's analysis by the fact that all the examples given
there of design details worked out in the course of construction are elevation
details. Exactly corresponding to this is the fact that the full scale drawing out of
architectural details on masonry surfaces of the building under construction are
also elevation details—notably columns and pediments as evidenced in Early Hel-
lenistic times at Didyma (v Hasselberger's reports). Here it must be observed that
Draw-
ings &
models
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