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An order in architecture is a certain assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions, regulated by the office that each part has to perform. Coming down to the present from Ancient Greece and Ancient Roman civilization, the architectural orders are the styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the type of column employed. The three orders of architecture—the Doric order, Ionic order, and Corinthian order—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added, in practice if not in name, the Tuscan order, which they made simpler than Doric, and the Composite order, which was more ornamental than the Corinthian. The architectural order of a classical building is akin to the Musical mode or key of classical music; the grammar or rhetoric of a written composition. It is established by certain modules like the intervals of music, and it raises certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language.Summerson, pp. 7–15
Whereas the orders were essentially structural in Ancient Greek architecture, which made little use of the arch until its late period, in Roman architecture where the arch was often dominant, the orders became increasingly decorative elements except in and similar uses. Columns shrank into half-columns emerging from walls or turned into . This treatment continued after the conscious and "correct" use of the orders, initially following exclusively Roman models, returned in the Italian Renaissance.Summerson, pp. 19–21 Greek Revival architecture, inspired by increasing knowledge of Greek originals, returned to more authentic models, including ones from relatively early periods.
The capital rests on the shaft. It has a load-bearing function, which concentrates the weight of the entablature on the supportive column, but it primarily serves an aesthetic purpose. The necking is the continuation of the shaft, but is visually separated by one or many grooves. The echinus lies atop the necking. It is a circular block that bulges outwards towards the top to support the abacus, which is a square or shaped block that in turn supports the entablature. The entablature consists of three horizontal layers, all of which are visually separated from each other using moldings or bands. In Roman and post-Renaissance work, the entablature may be carried from column to column in the form of an arch that springs from the column that bears its weight, retaining its divisions and sculptural enrichment, if any. There are names for all the many parts of the orders.
Sometimes the Doric order is considered the earliest order, but there is no evidence to support this. Rather, the Doric and Ionic orders seem to have appeared at around the same time, the Ionic in eastern Greece and the Doric in the west and mainland.
Both the Doric and the Ionic order appear to have originated in wood. The Temple of Hera in Olympia is the oldest well-preserved temple of Doric architecture. It was built just after 600 BC. The Doric order later spread across Greece and into Sicily, where it was the chief order for monumental architecture for 800 years. Early Greeks were no doubt aware of the use of stone columns with bases and capitals in ancient Egyptian architecture, and that of other Near Eastern cultures, although there they were mostly used in interiors, rather than as a dominant feature of all or part of exteriors, in the Greek style.
Above the capital is a square abacus connecting the capital to the entablature. The entablature is divided into three horizontal registers, the lower part of which is either smooth or divided by horizontal lines. The upper half is distinctive for the Doric order. The frieze of the Doric entablature is divided into and metopes. A triglyph is a unit consisting of three vertical bands which are separated by grooves. Metopes are the plain or carved reliefs between two triglyphs.
The Greek forms of the Doric order come without an individual base. They instead are placed directly on the stylobate. Later forms, however, came with the conventional base consisting of a plinth and a torus. The Roman versions of the Doric order have smaller proportions. As a result, they appear lighter than the Greek orders.
The Ionic order is also marked by an entasis, a curved tapering in the column shaft. A column of the Ionic order is nine times more tall than its lower diameter. The shaft itself is eight diameters high. The architrave of the entablature commonly consists of three stepped bands ( fasciae). The frieze comes without the Doric triglyph and metope. The frieze sometimes comes with a continuous ornament such as carved figures instead.
The Roman writer Vitruvius credited the invention of the Corinthian order to Callimachus, a Greek sculpture of the 5th century BC. The oldest known building built according to this order is the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, constructed from 335 to 334 BC. The Corinthian order was raised to rank by the writings of Vitruvius in the 1st century BC.
The Giant order was invented by architects in the Renaissance. The Giant order is characterized by columns that extend the height of two or more stories.
The term order, as well as the idea of redefining the canon started circulating in Rome, at the beginning of the 16th century, probably during the studies of Vitruvius' text conducted and shared by Peruzzi, Raphael, and Sangallo.H. Burns and H. Gunthers, 24éme Colloque International d'Etude Humanistes, Tours 1981 Ever since, the definition of the canon has been a collective endeavor that involved several generations of European architects, from Renaissance and Baroque periods, basing their theories both on the study of Vitruvius' writings and the observation of Roman ruins (the Greek ruins became available only after Greek Independence, 1821–1823). What was added were rules for the use of the Architectural Orders, and the exact proportions of them in minute detail. Commentary on the appropriateness of the orders for temples devoted to particular deities (Vitruvius I.2.5) were elaborated by Renaissance theorists, with Doric characterized as bold and manly, Ionic as matronly, and Corinthian as maidenly.
The book consisted simply of an introduction followed by 32 annotated plates, highlighting the proportional system with all the minute details of the Five Architectural Orders. According to Christof Thoenes, the main expert of Renaissance architectural treatises, "in accordance with Vitruvius's example, Vignola chose a "module" equal to a half-diameter which is the base of the system. All the other measurements are expressed in fractions or in multiples of this module. The result is an arithmetical model, and with its help each order, harmoniously proportioned, can easily be adapted to any given height, of a façade or an interior. From this point of view, Vignola's Regola is a remarkable intellectual achievement".
In America, The American Builder's Companion,Asher Benjamin9780486222363, Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486222363 written in the early 19th century by the architect Asher Benjamin, influenced many builders in the eastern states, particularly those who developed what became known as the Federal style. The last American re-interpretation of Vignola's Regola, was edited in 1904 by William Robert Ware.
The break from the classical mode came first with the Gothic Revival architecture, then the development of modernism during the 19th century. The Bauhaus promoted pure functionalism, stripped of ornament considered superfluous, and that has become one of the defining characteristics of modern architecture. There are some exceptions. Postmodernism introduced an ironic use of the orders as a cultural reference, divorced from the strict rules of composition. On the other hand, a number of practitioners such as Quinlan Terry in England, and Michael Dwyer, Richard Sammons, and Duncan Stroik in the United States, continue the classical tradition, and use the classical orders in their work.
These nonce orders all express the "speaking architecture" ( architecture parlante) that was taught in the Paris courses, most explicitly by Étienne-Louis Boullée, in which sculptural details of classical architecture could be enlisted to speak symbolically, the better to express the purpose of the structure and enrich its visual meaning with specific appropriateness.
In 1789 George Dance invented an Ammonite order, a variant of Ionic, substituting volutes in the form of fossil for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, London. (2026). 9780199674992, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199674992
An adaptation of the Corinthian order by William Donthorne that used turnip leaves and mangelwurzel is termed the Agricultural order.Curl, p. 238Curl, p. 11
Sir Edwin Lutyens, who from 1912 laid out New Delhi as the new seat of government for the British Empire in India, designed a Delhi order having a capital displaying a band of vertical ridges, and with bells hanging at each corner as a replacement for volutes. His design for the new city's central palace, Viceroy's House, now the Presidential residence Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, was a thorough integration of elements of Indian architecture into a building of classical forms and proportions, and made use of the order throughout. The Delhi Order reappears in some later Lutyens buildings including Campion Hall, Oxford.
With peace restored, Latrobe designed an American order that substituted tobacco leaves for the acanthus, of which he sent a sketch to Thomas Jefferson in a letter, 5 November 1816. He was encouraged to send a model of it, which remains at Monticello. In the 1830s Alexander Jackson Davis admired it enough to make a drawing of it. In 1809 Latrobe invented a second American order, employing magnolia flowers constrained within the profile of classical mouldings, as his drawing demonstrates. It was intended for "the Upper Columns in the Gallery of the Entrance of the Chamber of the Senate".
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