Half column

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A half column is a column whose shaft only half protrudes from a wall or the core of a pillar . In the history of architecture, half-columns have been used both to structure facades and to reshape load-bearing pillars. The terms quarter and three- quarter column also exist in these contexts .

Wall and facade structure

Maison Carrée , Nîmes, Roman temple around 19 BC Chr.

In ancient architecture since the late 5th century BC Chr. Half columns to the facade structure. They can be found both in connection with windowed exterior facades, such as the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens, as well as in interior designs. An early form in which the inner columns were connected to the wall with wall tongues is around 420 BC. To be found at the Temple of Apollo near Bassae . At the temple of Athena Alea around 340 BC Fully developed half-columns in the monumental interior architecture are detectable. Half-columns were then incorporated into the exterior architecture of Greek temples around 300 BC. BC, where they are constitutive for the building type of the pseudoperipteros . As merely a structuring, decorative element, they had no load-bearing function, were statically irrelevant and consequently widespread in both Greek and Roman architecture .

In the post-antique period, the motif of the half-column was taken up again and again and played a major role in the facade design of the Renaissance . In the 18th and 19th centuries, the three-quarter column or the full column was increasingly used.

Pillars and services

Bundles of service in Laon Cathedral

With more complex vault structures and their arches, the load-bearing pillars developed more differentiated forms in post-ancient times. For example with the cross pillar with a square core and a rectangular template on each of the four sides. So-called services were already added in the Romanesque period . Services are upstream quarter, half or three-quarter columns that continue into the ribs of a vault and carry loads.

The art historian Hans Jantzen writes in connection with the reshaping of the pillars between the central nave and side aisle in Gothic cathedrals:

“The Romanesque designed the arcade pillars as a cross-shaped wall pillar, which, even if it is provided with templates, structurally still retains the connection with the <wall>, which is understood as a homogeneous mass of the wall. The Gothic cannot use this pillar, as it kneads the <wall> plastically and basically assumes that it is composed of nothing but round rod-shaped elements. "

Against this background, the cantoned pillar (or articulated pillar) was used. In the course of the High Gothic period, pillars that were formed more and more densely by services are also called bundle pillars .

References and footnotes

1. ↑ Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Honor, John Fleming: Lexikon der Weltarchitektur , 3rd edition, Munich, Prestel, 1992, Lemma Halbsäule .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Christoph Höcker: Metzler Lexikon antique architecture , Stuttgart, Metzler / Poeschel, 2004, Lemma half column .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Hans-Joachim Kadatz: Dictionary of Architecture , Leipzig, 1988, Lemma half column .
4. ↑ Wilfried Koch: Baustilkunde , 27th edition, Gütersloh / Munich, 2006, index: pillars or the following compounds under [567].
5. ^ Wilfried Koch: Baustilkunde , 27th edition, Gütersloh / Munich, 2006, index: Dienst [171].
6. ↑ Hans Jantzen: Art of the Gothic. Classical cathedrals of France Chartres, Reims, Amiens , Rowohlt, 1957/1968, p. 18.