The Classical Orders

Definition

The five orders — Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite — are the column-and-entablature units treated as the canonical vocabulary of classical architecture. An order is "the total assemblage of parts comprising the column and its appropriate entablature" (pedestal optional). Their canonical form is a Renaissance invention: Vitruvius described Doric, Ionic and Corinthian (with notes on the Tuscan) but presented no closed set and no canonical formulae; Alberti added the Composite from observation of Roman remains; Serlio (1537) first staged all five "standing side by side" ranged by slenderness — a "very effective and, quite literally, dramatic gesture" that launched the orders on "their long career of canonical, symbolic, almost legendary, authority." The set was normalized by Vignola (1562), Palladio (1570) and Scamozzi (1615).

Summerson's central polemic: the orders are not a "child's box of bricks which architects have used to save themselves the trouble of inventing," but "grammatical expressions imposing a formidable discipline but a discipline within which personal sensibility always has a certain play — a discipline, moreover, which can sometimes be burst asunder by a flight of poetic genius."

Key Features (as grammatical rules)

• Degrees of integration: column in the round, detached column, three-quarter column, half column, pilaster — "four degrees of relief, four strengths of shadow"; every change of plane forces the entablature to break forward ("You cannot dodge columns about under an unchanging entablature").
• Superimposition: distinct orders stacked by storey (Colosseum: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian over a plain top storey); Michelangelo's liberating invention of the colossal order tied to a subsidiary order.
• Intercolumniation as tempo: Vitruvius's five standard spacings (pycnostyle 1½ diameters to araeostyle 4) "set the 'tempo' of a building" — systyle "allegro", eustyle "andante", pycnostyle a "palisade of men drawn up to attention."
• Arch–order conjunction: the orders married to arcuated structure as expressive control, tuned so that "a quite slight alteration to any part would wreck the whole thing" (the Colosseum bay; Vignola's tighter theoretical version).
• Character and personification: from Vitruvius's gendered bodies (Doric male, Ionic "feminine slenderness", Corinthian "the slight figure of a girl") to Serlio's allocation of orders to saint types and building classes — the orders as "a sort of gamut of architectural character all the way from the rough and tough to the slim and fine"; selecting the order "is a choice of mood."

Key Thinkers

• Vitruvius — the sole surviving ancient treatise; a "code of practice" preserving traditional lore, not a canon.
• Leon Battista Alberti — added the fifth (Composite) order from observation.
• summerson-john — the anti-box-of-bricks reading: canon as discipline for sensibility; "He loved, obeyed and defied the orders all at the same time" (on Lutyens).
• Serlio, Vignola, Palladio, Scamozzi — the normalizing theorists.
• Edwin Lutyens — Summerson's exemplary modern classical: "You can't copy it. To be right you have to take it and design it."

Related Concepts

• architectural-language — the orders as the vocabulary/grammar of the language.
• proportion — the ratios that make the orders "demonstrations of harmonious composition."
• primitive-hut — Laugier's rationalist demolition of the orders' authority (elimination of "architecture in relief").
• architectural-ornament — enrichment conventions (egg-and-dart, bead-and-reel) and rustication as the orders' expressive Other.
• tradition — the orders as the paradigm case of an inherited, discipline-bearing tradition.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Classical Language of Architecture — chapters 1–2 give the full grammar: the five orders, their canonization by Serlio, the petrified-timber hypothesis for Doric, deployment rules, intercolumniation, and the Lutyens letters.

Open Questions

• Summerson traces the canon to Serlio's staged set: how much of classical architecture's subsequent authority rests on a publishing event rather than on ancient practice?
• If the orders are "grammatical expressions," is their modern survival (Perret's implied orders, the "vestigial allusion") a grammar without a native-speaking community?
• Can the orders' personified "character" gamut (rough Tuscan to opulent Composite) be reconciled with any post-classical theory of architectural expression?