I.12.2
COMBINATION OF VERTICAL AND
HORIZONTAL PROJECTION
All buildings and installations shown on the Plan are
rendered in vertical line projection. In certain instances,
however, to this projection is added a straight-on view,
showing the elevation of a wall as though it were lying flat
on the ground. Examples of this are: the arcaded walls of
the cloister walks (Monks' Cloister [fig. 191], Novitiate and
Infirmary [fig. 236]), the arcuated porches of the Abbot's
House (fig. 251), and details such as the crosses on the
altars of the Church (fig. 251), or the monumental cross in
the graveyard (fig. 430). In tracing these elements the
architect made use of the mason's age-old habit of sketching
architectural elevations on the ground when explaining the
design of a building to an apprentice or a client. The method
was even more familiar to carpenters, who not only laid out
but actually cut, assembled, and jointed many of their roof-supporting
trusses on the ground before raising them into
the vertical plane with pulley and ropes.
The designer of the scheme of the Plan employed this
device with discretion—only in places that offered sufficient
space to use it without obstructing other architectural
features or blurring the general clarity of the Plan. In this
manner he succeeded in conveying to the builder, in unmistakable
language, not only the design but also the exact
proportions of the great galleried porches that surrounded
the cloister yards and served as connecting links between
the claustral buildings.
The combination of vertical and horizontal projection in
one and the same architectural drawing or plan probably is
a principle as old as architecture itself and common to all
periods. It was firmly established in Egyptian art and was
there refined to a point where it depicted not only the
planimetrical layout of the buildings with which it was
concerned, but also the human events that took place in
these settings. This led to compositions of great complexity,
in which features drawn in elevation (favored because of
their ability to tell a story more fully and more conspicuously)
tended to overcrowd and blur the plan.[245]
The house
shown in figure 45.A-B is a simple and easily readable
example of this tradition. Others are not so susceptible to
easy interpretation.[246]
It is not so widely known that an admixture of vertical
and horizontal projection is also found in Roman architectural
drawings, although there it is not used with comparable
profusion. This can be inferred from the famous
Forma urbis, the now-fragmentary plan of Rome that was
incised in marble during the reign of Emperor Septimius
Severus, between A.D. 205 and 208.
[247]
Generally rendered in
vertical projection (typical examples are shown in fig. 46),
this plan shows arcuated elements incised in elevation in at
least three different places, each time in connection with the
representation of an aqueduct (fig. 47.A-C).
[248]
As on the Plan
of St. Gall this delineation of arch forms occurs only in
relatively uncluttered areas of the
Forma urbis; in more
crowded sections a more compact symbol of piers, or bars
connected by two curved lines, is used (fig. 47.D-F) for
aqueducts as well as other types of arches.
