MODULAR SPACE DIVISION: AN INTRINSIC
FEATURE OF PREHISTORIC, PROTOHISTORIC, AND
MEDIEVAL WOOD CONSTRUCTION
In an article dealing with the origins of the medieval bay
system,[300]
I have pointed out that modular design has been
from the remotest periods an intrinsic feature of northern
wood construction. The stability of the timbered Germanic
house required that its roof-supporting posts be joined
together at the top: lengthwise by means of plates, and
crosswise by means of tie beams. This divides the space of
the house into a modular sequence of timber-framed bays
(figs. 175 and 176). Recent excavations have made it clear
that this construction type came into existence around 1200
B.C., and for the next two thousand years it served as an
all-purpose house in the Germanic territories of Holland,
Germany, England, and Scandinavia as well as in all those
areas of Central and Western Europe that were primarily
settled by Germanic peoples.[301]
In timber this concept is
old; in stone it is new. In timber it develops as a logical
construction method from the natural properties of the
material. In masonry it is an intrusive feature, imposed
upon the material as a willed aesthetic principle—and
therefore ushers in a conflict between style and building
material which, in its ultimate phase, the Gothic, led to a
complete denial of the natural properties of stone. I have
suggested that the modular arrangement of space, which
begins in Carolingian Church architecture, gathers increasing
strength in the Ottonian period and reaches its peak of
expression in the Romanesque and Gothic (fig. 177), has
one of its roots in the fact that these churches were constructed
by men in whose collective memory "to build"
had been synonymous with building in modular sequences
of space.
The validity and importance of this explanation cannot
be appreciated until it is understood that the determining
factor in analyzing the origins of square schematism is not
that it is based on the shape of the square, but that it
establishes a system of binding modular relationships. In
distinguishing between the système des carrés of the Romanesque
and the système des barlongs of the Gothic, we have
lost sight of the fact that both of these systems are members
of the same family. Whether the module is square or
rectangular is determined by secondary conditions, sometimes
functional, sometimes constructional, sometimes
stylistic, and on occasion, even by purely arbitrary reasons.
The house of the Germanic chieftain of the first and second
centuries A.D., which is shown in figures 175-176, employs
both the square and the rectangular module, the former in
the living area, identifiable by the hearth; the latter, in the
section of the house where the cattle are stabled, identifiable
by the manure mats.[302]
Here the shape of the module is
conditioned by strictly functional considerations: the roof-supporting
trusses are spaced at intervals of 6 to 7 feet, just
as much space as is needed to stable two head of cattle. In
the living section of the house, on the other hand, the
trusses are set further apart to give greater freedom of
movement. The distinction is very old and can be observed
in Bronze Age houses of the same construction type, dating
from around 1200 B.C., recently excavated by Waterbolk in
Elp, Holland.[303]
In the Carolingian monastery churches discussed in the
preceding pages, the square is the more reasonable form
to be adopted—at least in the liturgically most important
areas—the choir and the transept— which lend themselves
to square division with notable ease. In the nave, this was
more difficult to obtain, since here the square division
conflicted with the narrow intercolumniation inherited
from the Early Christian prototype churches. It required
a strong personality to move the columns apart to the novel
and daring distance of 20 feet, as was done in the Church
of the Plan, and thus to express the module in the bodily
sequence on the columns. The designer of the Church of
Cologne may have struggled with similar ideas (fig. 172), but
abandoned the scheme in actual construction (figs. 15-16).
