pilaster
A pilaster (from Latin pila "pillar") is a pillar-like form element of architecture .
Load-bearing pillar and blind pillar
The pilaster is a partial pillar incorporated into the wall structure , which is also known as a wall pillar. It can have a load-bearing static function, but does not have to have this. Similar to the " half or blend column ", the pilaster can be an element of the pseudo architecture in plaster and stucco . The German expression "Reliefpfeiler", which is better known as the longest palindrome word, is then rarely found . Its main architectural purpose is the vertical division of exterior or interior wall surfaces. In contrast to the pilaster strip , it has a base , capital or fighter .
A special shape is the “Hermenpilaster”, the shaft of which tapers downwards like a Herme . Such forms are found mainly in the late Baroque Spanish style of Churriguerism .
Pilasters that extend over several floors of a colossal order are called colossal pilasters . In this form they can also serve as buttresses .
Europe
Pilasters were already used to design and structure walls in ancient Greek architecture , and Roman architects also made extensive use of them. The architectural motif was equally popular in both Romanesque and Gothic architecture. In the Renaissance , the pilaster was one of the most common means of structuring, for example on the facade of the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence , and was then used as the dominant facade as a structural element as well as a structural element in interior design from classicism to historicism . From there it also goes over to contemporary furniture design, where the paneling is structured in a pilaster shape with the framing frames .
The pilaster disappears with the reduced formal language of modernity , which only makes elementary construction contexts visible to the outside. Only since Brutalism has it been found again in its functional, load-bearing form as an outward-looking element of the skeleton construction in concrete, albeit pilaster-like with no base and head elements, unless the frame construction requires it.
India
Also in the South Indian Pallava architecture (7th – 9th centuries) and especially in the temporally and stylistically subsequent Chola architecture (9th – 12th centuries) there are pilaster-like vertical structures of the outer walls of temples.
literature
- Wilfried Koch: Architectural style . 32nd edition, Prestel, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-7913-4997-8 , p. 475.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to the 1997 Guinness Book of Records, the longest German one-word palindrome is a relief pillar (German for pilasters).
- ↑ Stefan Kummer : Architecture and fine arts from the beginnings of the Renaissance to the end of the Baroque. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes; Volume 2: From the Peasants' War in 1525 to the transition to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1814. Theiss, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8062-1477-8 , pp. 576–678 and 942–952, here: p. 608.