I.12.5
LACK OF SPECIFIC INFORMATION
CONCERNING BUILDING MATERIALS
The Plan does not give explicit instructions for the materials
with which the individual buildings were to be constructed.
All installations are rendered in a uniform line,
and this line may stand for a masonry wall, a wooden fence,
the outlines of a bench or a table, or a seedling bed in the
vegetable garden. It is fairly obvious, however, both in
view of the peculiarity of their design and the prevailing
building customs, that stone construction was envisaged
for the nuclear claustral structures: the Church, with its
columnar order, its circular towers, and apses; the Cloister,
with its round-arched galleries and portals, as well as the
monastic buildings directly contingent to the Cloister; the
Dormitory, the Refectory, and the Cellar. To these should
be added the complex that contains the Novitiate and the
Infirmary with its round-arched cloister walks and round-apsed
chapels, and, finally, the Abbot's House with its
arcuated porches. Whether masonry can be postulated for
any of the remaining structures is a controversial question
to which special attention will have to be given later in this
study.[259]
