Ground and structure
Column
housingcorredortemplehigh-rise building
It is a vertical support that carries the weight of beams, slabs and roofs to the ground.
What it solves
It frees the plan from walls and allows open spaces, verandas and facades that let the breeze through. In seismic zones it must resist and deform without breaking.
Today
Place the columns on an orderly grid, aligned from floor to floor. Separate timber from the ground with a stone or concrete base to prevent rot.
Common mistake
Cutting or misaligning columns between floors to gain space, which breaks the load path.
Tomorrow
Glulam or bamboo columns with bolted joints can be dismantled and taken to another site. Designing them with repeated dimensions makes that second use easier.
Where it comes from
- 1Ancient Egypt Nile Valley, since around 2600 BC
Imhotep carved stone columns that imitated bundles of reeds. At Karnak, 134 columns stand in sixteen rows. - 2Achaemenid Persia Persepolis, Iran, reign of Darius I
The Apadana hall used tall, slender columns because they supported timber beams, not stone ones. - 3Maya and Toltec Chichén Itzá, Mexico, 10th and 11th centuries
The Group of the Thousand Columns covered large halls with rows of stone columns. - 4Rural house Central America and the Caribbean, of diffuse origin
Horcón is the name for the vertical timber that supports beams and eaves in rustic houses.
Masters
- Frank Lloyd Wright Johnson Wax Administration Building, Racine, United States, 1939
He designs hollow columns of thin concrete that widen toward the top. He tested one at full scale, loading it until he convinced the inspectors that it would hold. - Oscar Niemeyer Palácio da Alvorada, Brasília, Brazil, 1957
He places a row of curved columns in front of the facade that seem to float above the ground. It shows that a column can support the slab and at the same time give character to the whole building.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Ground and structure
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.