Pilaster

In

It is also a purely ornamental element used in Classical architecture. As such it may be defined as a flattened column which has lost its three-dimensional and tactile value."^[2].

In Classical architecture

In discussing Leon Battista Alberti's use of pilasters, which Alberti reintroduced into wall-architecture, Rudolf Wittkower wrote: "The pilaster is the logical transformation of the column for the decoration of a wall.

A pilaster appears with a capital.^[3] and entablature, also in "low-relief" or flattened against the wall. Generally, a pilaster often repeats all parts and proportions of an order column; however, unlike it, a pilaster is usually devoid of entasis.

Pilasters often appear on the sides of a door frame or window opening on the

When a pilaster appears at the corner intersection of two walls it is known as a canton.[4]

As with a column, a pilaster can have a plain or fluted surface to its profile and can be represented in the mode of numerous architectural styles. During the Renaissance and Baroque architects used a range of pilaster forms.^[5] In the giant order pilasters appear as two storeys tall, linking floors in a single unit.

The fashion of using this decorative element from ancient Greek and Roman architecture was adopted in the Italian Renaissance, gained wide popularity with Greek Revival architecture, and continues to be seen in some modern architecture.

Gallery

• 
  Two fragments of French pilasters, made of oak, in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York City)
• 
  Illustrations of Ionic pilasters with festoons on their capitals, from Germany, in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
• 
  Illustrations of Corinthian pilasters, from Germany, in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
• 
  Part of a Renaissance Corinthian pilaster of the Hôtel du Vieux-Raisin (Toulouse, France)
• 
  Pilaster in Strasbourg (France), being Renaissance and Louis XIV style at the same time
• 
  A pair of pilasters flanking a door in Lyon (France)
• 
  Two pilasters in Lviv, (Ukraine)
• 
  Capital of a Doric pilaster from Lviv
• 
  Corinthianesque capital of a pilaster from Grottaferrata (Italy)
• 
  Colossal order of Composite pilasters. 1st and 2nd floors of a 19th-century building, 8 avenue de l'Opéra

  (Paris)
• 
  Two pairs of Ionic pilasters flanking a door in Paris
• 
  A pair of Doric pilasters flanking a door in Montpellier (France)
• 
  A pair of Doric pilasters flanking a door in Enkhuizen (the Netherlands)
• 
  House from 1663, decorated with Corinthian pilasters, in Workum (the Netherlands)
• 
  Doric pilasters on the Jesuit Church of Sibiu (Transylvania, Romania)
• 
  Egyptian Revival hathoric pilaster on the Foire du Caire building (Paris)

See also

• Glossary of architecture
• Classical order
• Lesene
• Post and lintel

Notes

References

• Lewis, Philippa, and Gillian Darley (1986). Dictionary of Ornament. New York: Pantheon.

External links

Look up pilaster in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pilasters.