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Decorum, a Latin term, is the standard of appropriateness or propriety applied to all matters of human conduct in classical antiquity, and in architecture refers to the principles and standards of design appropriate to a particular building for its particular function. The idea derives from the application of the Aristotelian Mean and the consequent avoidance of extremes, as a notion of conduct, and particularly of speech, and in the formation of a rhetorical argument. Vitruvius in De Aedificatoria (1st century  BCE) recommends, for example, the use of particular orders for temples to particular gods, and also that where a building has a magnificent hall, it must not have a mean entrance but one appropriate to the magnificence within. As a precept influencing design it also governed the type of decoration, and became of enormous influence after the rediscovery of Vitruvius in Renaissance Europe. JM |
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