Unfortunately for those of us in noisy cities in the rest of the world, Kyocera says they will not be selling the Android-based Urbano Progresso outside of Japan anytime soon. 600 BC. The Ionic order co-existed with the Doric, being favoured by the Greek cities of Ionia, in Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands. The early Ionic temples of Asia Minor were particularly ambitious in scale, such as the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Like the Doric order, the Ionic order retains signs of having its origins in wooden architecture. Fathered by medical experts and mothered by medically tested silicon, the cups are shaped like a bell which is placed in the vagina to hold the blood but does not absorb it; the blood is later disposed and the cup is washed thoroughly using clean water. We had to stop three times for boat checks for invasive species along Highway 2. One time an official carefully sponged out the water in our boats left from the hard rains we had passed through. While the three orders are most easily recognizable by their capitals, they also governed the form, proportions, details and relationships of the columns, entablature, pediment, and the stylobate.

The columns of an early Doric temple such as the Temple of Apollo at Syracuse, Sicily, may have a height to base diameter ratio of only 4:1 and a column height to entablature ratio of 2:1, with relatively crude details. The Doric order is recognised by its capital, of which the echinus is like a circular cushion rising from the top of the column to the square abacus on which rest the lintels. Doric columns are almost always cut with grooves, known as “fluting”, which run the length of the column and are usually 20 in number, although sometimes fewer. Each triglyph has three vertical grooves, similar to the columnar fluting, and below them, seemingly connected, are guttae, small strips that appear to connect the triglyphs to the architrave below. At the top of the columns, slightly below the narrowest point, and crossing the terminating arrises, are three horizontal grooves known as the hypotrachelion.

The Ionic order is recognized by its voluted capital, in which a curved echinus of similar shape to that of the Doric order, but decorated with stylised ornament, is surmounted by a horizontal band that scrolls under to either side, forming spirals or volutes similar to those of the nautilus shell or ram’s horn. The ratio is similar to that of the growth patterns of many spiral forms that occur in nature such as rams’ horns, nautilus shells, fern fronds, and vine tendrils and which were a source of decorative motifs employed by ancient Greek architects as particularly in evidence in the volutes of capitals of the Ionic and Corinthian Orders. The ideal of proportion that was used by ancient Greek architects in designing temples was not a simple mathematical progression using a square module. The ancient Greek architects took a philosophic approach to the rules and proportions. Helen Gardner refers to its “unsurpassable excellence”, to be surveyed, studied and emulated by architects of later ages.

Yet, as Gardner points out, there is hardly a straight line in the building. At either end of the building the pediment rises from the cornice, framed by moulding of similar form. The pediment is decorated with figures that are in relief in the earlier examples, though almost free-standing by the time of the sculpture on the Parthenon. The echinus appears flat and splayed in early examples, deeper and with greater curve in later, more refined examples, and smaller and straight-sided in Hellenistic examples. Doric columns have no bases, until a few examples in the Hellenistic period. This is more pronounced in earlier examples. This can be an additional 2% to 3% surcharge on top of the price of your purchase and makes everything you buy with a card in a foreign country more expensive than a card without this fee. The most obvious adjustment is to the profile of columns, which narrow from base to top. A slightly greater adjustment has been made to the entablature. The Doric entablature is in three parts, the architrave, the frieze and the cornice. Ancient Greek architecture of the most formal type, for temples and other public buildings, is divided stylistically into three Classical orders, first described by the Roman architectural writer Vitruvius.