Rustication

These days the exterior of a house is no longer required to look imposing and forbidding, as it once was. Even so, the Roman tradition of facade decoration remains more than in demand for cladding country houses. Today we will talk about the use of rustication — the favorite finishing technique of fifteenth-century Italian architects and of Russian masters in the age of Peter the Great.

Rusticated corners of the Chateau de la Bachasse, Rhone, France.

Rustication detail Architects use the term «rustication» to refer to two things: the finishing stone itself, or the dividing grooves between stones (including grooves drawn in plaster). Rustication stones take many forms: the outer walls of buildings were usually faced with tightly fitted quadrangular stones whose front face kept the texture of «wild» stone and was left roughly hewn, edged with a narrow smooth band. Archways were made of trapezoidal stones. Rustication was sometimes made of bricks or planks and then painted in two colors. Today the corners of houses are increasingly faced with smooth regular slabs of artificial materials, and with the arrival of rustication plasters it became possible to simply draw them onto the facades of houses.

Rustication. Sandunov Baths — The Sandunov Baths on Neglinnaya Street. Moscow, 1808. Redesigned in 1896.

Historical overview

The rustic style (from the Latin rusticus, "simple, rough, rural," or from rus, "village, countryside") became popular during the Renaissance among Tuscan craftsmen. They drew inspiration from Roman buildings, where stone (still without smooth edges) was used to face the architectural parts that were meant to convey solidity and mass (the plinths of houses, towers, bridges, aqueducts, and other more or less significant structures). On the streets of ancient Rome, rustication also had a purely practical use: it served as protection against blows from the carts passing along the narrow streets.

Rusticated wooden corners — Rusticated corners on the house of V. E. Paisov. Kolyvan district near Novosibirsk.

Italians treat their own heritage creatively, and alongside natural hewn stone they began to use stucco imitations of stone, stucco imitations of lime tufa, and plain plaster to reproduce rustication — imitating the division of the wall into rectangles or bands. Brilliant examples of rustication can be found in Florence: the Palazzo Vecchio, the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, and the Palazzo Strozzi. The Palazzo Pitti, by contrast, demonstrates the new possibilities of rustication: the unstable, fluid Mannerist style called for architectural forms of lightness and a whimsical interplay of light and shadow. This is how diamanti (or diamond) rustication was born, with a "diamond" cut to the stones (a fine Russian example of the style is the facade of the Faceted Chamber in the Kremlin).

A pavilion with rusticated stones — A pavilion with rusticated walls near the Chateau de Versailles.

Russian architects became interested in rustication at the turn of the eighteenth century, during the era of Petrine Baroque and Russian Classicism. That is why both the historic center of St. Petersburg and the small merchant mansions of Moscow are often styled after Florentine Renaissance palazzos, offering fine examples of French rustication with deep horizontal grooves.

Evolution over time

Today rustication stones are used in finishing only as a decorative element, that is, they serve a purely aesthetic function. And so the need to use natural stone has fallen away: it puts too much load on bearing walls, it is hard to dismantle, and it is very expensive. It has been replaced by lightweight artificial stone made of polyurethane, polystyrene foam, or architectural concrete. Such rustication can come in different shapes and textures; it is used to face the corners of buildings, window and door openings, and the smooth parts of facades. It combines easily with almost all types of wall cladding and looks equally good with masonry, rubble stone, plaster, and even siding. Today rustication panels are used to decorate corners — 3 to 4 rustication panels combined into a single vertical element. They greatly simplify the installation of decorative stone facade cladding. And so, having shifted its main function from protective to decorative, rustication remains one of the most prominent and sought-after elements of facade finishing.

Rustication in a modern design — Modern rustication. Fiber-cement panels, Metaform Architecture.

Glossary

Rustication stone (rust): A quadrangular stone for wall cladding; it can be rectangular, square, or trapezoidal, with chamfered or right angles.
Rustication: Decorative wall treatment that looks like masonry of large stones. It may take the form of horizontal bands of equal height, in relief and projecting from the background.
Rustication plasters: A modern finishing material consisting of variously shaped stones separated by rustication joints. The surface of the stones can be smooth or textured, in various colors and shades. Rustication can be wide or narrow, smooth or with elements of architectural breaks.
Marble (stone) plasters: A finishing material that includes a filler of granite and marble chips, which produce a sparkling fracture when split. They are used to finish plinths and facades.

Variations

«Diamond» (diamanti) rustication — treatment of protruding stones in the form of tetrahedral pyramids resembling cut diamonds.
Voussoir rustication — treatment of an archway with large trapezoidal stones and a large keystone in the center, as well as decoration of the horizontal lintel above window or door openings with the same wedge-shaped stones, set "with a shift."
Banded rustication — a transverse element of rustication (a band, or muff) that "crosses" the vertical line, contradicting the tectonic logic. It is used to decorate columns to create an impression of instability.
«French» (ribbon) rustication — treatment of the facade (usually the lower part) with deep horizontal grooves and no vertical joints. It is called French because it was first used on the facade of the Grand Palais at Versailles.
Faceted rustication (seam) — a flat rustication with a complex grained or beveled edge.