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ABSENCE OF GUIDING UNDERDRAWING IN THE
INTERNAL LAYOUT OF INDIVIDUAL BUILDINGS

An examination of the procedure followed in the construction
of the internal layout of the various buildings leads us
to the same conclusions. No building illustrates this fact
more persuasively than the Monks' Dormitory.

The Dormitory of the monks (fig. 60.A) accommodates a
total of seventy-seven beds. These are arranged in a
complicated pattern, resembling the letter U along the
two side walls, and the letter H (the U-pattern of the side
walls coupled) along the center of the building. One does
not have to look twice at this complex arrangement to
realize that it is impossible to distribute seventy-seven beds
in the manner just described within an area of such small
dimensions without a carefully calculated underdrawing.
Yet intricate as this layout is, the basic frame of reference
from which it was developed was ingeniously simple. It
consisted, most likely, of a simple grid of squares of the
type that I have reconstructed in figure 60.B, making use of
a measurement that serves as a basic unit value throughout
the entire Plan. In the development of the primary design
for such a layout, which must have been worked out before
the building was inked onto the original plan, such a
square grid may have been pressed into the parchment in
full detail. As the design was transferred to the master
sheet in the final assembly, there was no need to retrace
the square grid in its entirety, but a minimum of auxiliary
co-ordinates and prickings must, nevertheless, have been
laid down to enable the draftsman to fix the width and
length of each bed and to enter it in its proper place. Yet
nowhere in the interstices between the beds, on the Plan
of St. Gall, is there the slightest trace of such auxiliary
construction work. It is omitted from the internal layout of
the buildings shown on the Plan, and absent as well from
their external alignment.

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