Editing Vitruvian module

{{Short description|Semidiameter of the column at its base}}
{{Refimprove|date=December 2009}}
[[Image:IWarePalladio1738Doric.jpg|thumb|right|[[Doric order]] illustration in Isaac Ware, ''The Four Books of Andrea Palladio's Architecture'', London 1738]]
A '''module''' (Latin ''modulus'', a measure) is a term that was in use among [[Classical architecture|Roman architects]], corresponding to the semidiameter of the [[column]] at its base. The term was first set forth by [[Vitruvius]] (book iv.3), and was employed by architects in the [[Italian Renaissance]] to determine the relative proportions of the various parts of the [[Classical orders]]. The module was divided by the 16th century theorists into thirty parts, called minutes, allowing for much greater precision than was thought necessary by Vitruvius, whose subdivision was usually six parts.<ref name="HartHicks1998">{{cite book|author1=Vaughan Hart|author2=Peter Hicks|title=Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0uG7zu-tqTkC&pg=PA344|year=1998|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-07530-4|pages=344–}}</ref>

When illustrating [[Andrea Palladio|Palladio]], the British architect Isaac Ware (''The Four Books of Andrea Palladio's Architecture'', London 1738; ''illustration, right'') laid out the [[Doric order]] as an exercise in modular construction. The module he selected was a full column diameter taken at the base. He set his columns, 15 modules tall, at an intercolumniation of 5½ modules. His architrave and frieze, without the cornice, are equal to one module.

The tendency in [[Beaux-Arts architecture|Beaux-Arts]] architectural training was similarly to adopt the whole columnar diameter as the module when determining the height of the column or entablature or any of their subdivisions.

Thus module can be extended to mean more generally a unitary part that gives the measuring unit for the whole. In education, for example, lessons may be divided into modules.

==Notes==
{{no footnotes|date=January 2014 }}

==References==
{{reflist}}
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Module |volume=18 |page=643}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitruvian Module}}
[[Category:Architectural theory]]