Architecture Glossary

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H

Half timbering - A method of construction in which the wooden frame and principal beams of a building are exposed, and the spaces between them are covered with plaster or masonry. Usually used in domestic architecture.

Hall church – A German type of church in which nave and aisle are of approximately equal height often united under a single immense roof. In contrast to a traditional basilica, which lets in light through a clerestory in the upper part of the nave, a hall church is lit through windowed side walls typically spanning the full height of the interior. This form of church construction reached its height in the late Gothic period, especially in German Sondergotik.

St. Wolfgangskirche Germany

Hammerbeam roof - In architecture, it is the name given to a Gothic open timber roof, of which the finest example is that over Westminster Hall (1395–1399). In order to give greater height in the centre, the ordinary tie beam is cut through, and the portions remaining, known as hammerbeams, are supported by curved braces from the wall; in Westminster Hall, in order to give greater strength to the framing, a large arched piece of timber is carried across the hall, rising from the bottom of the wall piece to the centre of the collar beam, the latter being also supported by curved braces rising from the end of the hammer-beam.

Hanging arch - An arch which has, or seems to have, no vertical supports.

Harmonic proportion – A system of proportions relating architecture to music. The ancient discovered that if two cords are twanged the difference in pitch will be one octave if the shorter is half the length of the longer, a fifth if one is two thirds of the other, and a fourth if the ratio is 3:4. It was therefore assumed that rooms or whole buildings whose measurement followed the ratio 1:2, 2:3, or 3:4 would be harmonious. Early Renaissance architects, notably Alberti, seized on this discovery as the key to the beauty of Roman architecture and also to the harmony of the universe. The idea was further developed by Palladio who, with the aid of Venetian musical theorists, evolved a far more complex scale of proportions based on the major and minor third – 5:6 and 4:5 – and so on.

Haunch – Part of an arch, roughly midway between the springing line and crown, where the lateral thrust is strongest.

Hemicycle - The group of columns, arranged in a semicircular formation, that divide the east end of a choir from the ambulatory.

Herm – Originally, a rectangular pillar terminating in a head or bust (usually of Hermes), used to mark boundaries, etc. in ancient Greece. The form was adopted by Renaissance and post-Renaissance architects.

Hexastyle – Of a portico with six frontal columns.

Hood-mould – A projecting moulding to throw off the rain, on the face of a wall, above an arch, doorway, or window.

Hypaethral – Without a roof, open to the sky.

Temple of Phidae

Hyperbolic paraboloid roof – A special form of double-curved shell, the geometry of which is generated by straight lines. This property makes it fairly easy to construct. The shape consists of a continuous plane developing from a parabolic arch in one direction to a similar inverted parabola in the other.

Tokyo Olympic Stadium - Kenzo Tange

Hypocaust – The underground chamber or duct of the Roman system of central heating, the floor being heated by the hot air circulating below. The gases escaped up flues in the walls. Thus heating these also.

Hypogeum – An underground room or vault.

Hypostyle – A hall or other large space over which the roof is supported by rows of columns like a forest.

Hypotrachelium – The groove round a Doric column between the shaft and the necking.

Architecture Glossary

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