Parterre comes from the French *par terre*, “on the ground”, and in building terms means the ground floor of a building: the storey at ground level. The word also has its own established meanings in garden design and in theatre architecture.
The three meanings
- Storey — the parterre is the ground floor, the level you reach from the street without stairs. The term is still in daily use in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
- Garden design — a parterre is a flat, symmetrically laid out ornamental bed, usually placed directly in front of the house and designed to be viewed from above. The *parterre de broderie* of the seventeenth-century French formal garden is the best known example: low box hedging in scrolling patterns with coloured gravel or flowers between.
- Theatre — the parterre is the flat seating area at ground level, as opposed to the balconies and boxes.
Applications
On a drawing or in a property listing the first meaning is almost always intended. Two points matter:
- Storey numbering differs by country — in continental Europe the ground floor is the zero level and the first floor sits above it. In the United States the ground floor is called the “first floor”, which is a persistent source of confusion in translated drawings and specifications.
- Floor level — the parterre floor is rarely exactly at ground level. It usually sits a few hundred millimetres higher, so that rainwater runs away from the facade and the threshold clears the surrounding paving.
For a garden parterre, flatness is the point: the pattern only reads if the bed is truly level or falls evenly at a slight gradient.
Related terms
- Ground floor
- Storey
- Datum level
- Ground level
- Basement
- Piano nobile
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