So in the plan of the
Pantheon (Fig. 29), this entrance through a colonnaded porch into a vast
circular compartment is in itself a great architectural idea,
independently of the manner in which it is built up.
[Illustration: Figs. 29 through 34]
We may carry out this a little further by imagining a varied treatment
on plan of a marked-out space of a certain size and proportion, on which
a church of some kind, for instance, is to be placed. The simplest idea
is to inclose it round with four walls as a parallelogram (Fig. 30),
only thickening the walls where the weight of the roof principals comes.
But this is a plan without an idea in it. The central or sacred space at
the end is not expressed in the plan, but is merely a railed-off portion
of the floor. The entrance is utterly without effect as well as without
shelter. If we lay out our plan as in Fig. 31, we see that there is now
an idea in it. The two towers, as they must evidently be, form an
advanced guard of the plan, the recessed central part connecting them
gives an effective entrance to the interior; the arrangement in three
aisles gives length, the apse at the end incloses and expresses the
_sacrarium_, which is the climax and object of the plan. The shape of
the ground, however, is not favorable to the employment of a long or
avenue type of plan, it is too short and square; let us rather try a
plan of the open area order, such as Fig 32.
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