View attachment 99463
Architect was an ass,
anyways
Having never met the person I will have to take your word for it. One thing that seems quite apparent is they never read their country mans fine work: The Seven Books Of Architecture by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580)
Reason being those arches depicted in this attachment are a recipe for disaster , your word is certainly not the problem,it purely is in the design of those arches. In Palladio's work he stresses the need for the abutments at the ends of arches to be at least equal to the span of the arches. His reasons are both from the aesthetics and structural perspectives. The aesthetics is purely subjective,the structural is empirical. The abutments adjacent to an arch have to have the ability to resist the thrust of the arch. They designed very shallow arches on both sides of a column that is outright puny,in my wildest imagination I could never call that column an abutment. I will bet anyone a dollar to a donut that in short order cracks will develop in that design and eventually complete failure will result.
I see it so very often in this country it would make your head swim. Designers have become so used to steel lintels that they are clueless in the correct protocol of arch design.
In this country they design 16' garage door openings with a shallow arch and if lucky a 2' return on both sides and then are amazed that the arch is cracking and collapsing :laughing: Then they have the audacity to point the finger at the mason.
Just my .02 .