Dazzling column
A light pillar is a form element of architecture .
Columns that appear to be blinded to a wall are referred to as blended columns . As a structural member, however, they are firmly connected to the wall that they structure. They are therefore built into the wall as a semi-protruding cylinder. In Romanesque and Gothic churches, they are usually used for holding the by transverse arches coming vault thrust .
However, similar to the flat, square pilasters or the pilaster strips , they often have no static function . Rather, they are an element of the pseudo architecture . Half columns or column positions closed by shear walls, which optically give the same impression, have existed since the late 5th century BC. In Greek architecture . The wall tongues in the cella of the Temple of Apollo in Bassai had half-columns. At the Temple of Athena in Tegea , the half-columns are suddenly placed in front of the wall.
In the exterior construction of Greek temples , the Greeks used the motif in the Pseudoperipteros Temple L in Epidaurus. The aim was to simulate a column position that the temple did not have on the long and back sides. The pillars are located on the outside walls of the cella . In fact, the difference to a peripteros only becomes clear when the viewer comes closer. But also pillar half-columns and double half-column pillars are familiar to the Greeks of Hellenism and form preliminary stages to oval columns and coupled columns. The motif of the half or blend column is particularly popular in theater architecture . The blending column, like the pilaster, therefore has, in addition to its creative enrichment, the function of dividing the wall, as can be demonstrated at the gymnasium in Stratonikeia .