groundplan

English

Alternative forms

• ground-plan
• ground plan

Etymology

ground +‎ plan

Noun

groundplan (plural groundplans)

1. (theater) A diagram showing the physical layout of a set, especially the placement of structures on the stage, as opposed to items on the walls or suspended from the ceiling.
   • 2013, Steven Louis Shelley, A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, →ISBN:

     In some cases, coordination between the lighting and scene designer may result in a preliminary scenic groundplan that indicates not only all of the scenic and masking information, but temporary lighting positions as well.

   • 2015, Francis Hodge, Michael McLain, Play Directing: Analysis, Communication, and Style, →ISBN, page 78:

     You must learn to be ingenious in arranging groundplans. Always avoid the dull and trite—what may be called the no-room: that bare, three-walled room without architectural jogs for relief; that room with a routine selection and placement of furniture; that room with doors placed in balanced positions in the walls. New ideas about illustrating the action will present themselves to both you and the actors if you think and feel freshly about what makes up a groundplan.

   • 2015, Robert Knopf, The Director as Collaborator, →ISBN, page 62:

     It is also a tool for communication, both to your actors and your audience, because the way in which the groundplan shapes the space reveals much about the how the director and designers view the possible uses of the space, its owner(s), and its purpose. The groundplan provides you with the opportunity to create a variety of physical relationships among the characters onstage and shapes the possible patterns of movement that the characters might follow during the action.

   • 2016, Emily Roth, Jonathan Allender-Zivic, Katy McGlaughlin, Stage Management Basics: A Primer for Performing Arts Stage Managers, →ISBN:

     Another method of recording blocking is to use a groundplan and numbered movements tracking sheet (see Figure 8.3).

2. A diagram, usually to scale, showing the layout of the ground level of a building or other physical structure; floorplan.
   • 2005, Peter Willey, The Eagle's Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria, →ISBN, page 138:

     Here the destruction is even more complete, and it was very difficult to trace the original groundplan.

   • 2012, J. Verfel, Rock Grouting and Diaphragm Wall Construction, →ISBN, page 191:

     An example of the groundplan arrangement of boreholes in a multi-row curtain is pictured in Fig. 3.99.

   • 2016, Lynn T. Courtenay, The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals, →ISBN, page 49:

     Roriczer begins, “If you wish to draw the groundplan for a pinnacle, according to the stonemason's art and with the correct geometry, then begin by drawing a square, as it is shown here with the letters a, b, c, d.”

3. A framework or pattern showing the form of something, without all the details.
   • 1836, Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus:

     A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me ; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it ; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine ! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the truest I had, was beginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.'

   • 1992, Constantin Virgil Negoita, Cybernetics and Applied Systems, →ISBN, page 56:

     Remarkedly enough, the frame or the groundplan as the innate program appears to be one of the central themes of cypbernetics and of the recently emerging compuational paradigm.

   • 1998, Charles Segal, Aglaia, →ISBN, page 295:

     The specific design or groundplan may be new, but the building blocks were already there for the poet to assemble.

   • 2003, Penny Thompson, Whatever Happened to Religious Education?, →ISBN, page 71:

     What they produced was in fact limited; they acknowledged that their work was both tentative and only a groundplan.

   • 2015, Seth Monahan, Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas, →ISBN:

     One Sonata Form in Mahler's Narrative Imagination This movement . . . has the same scaffolding, the same basic groundplan that you'll find in the works of Mozart and, on a grander scale, of Beethoven.

4. (evolutionary theory) A hypothetical anatomical form from which members of a clade are adaptations.
   • 1997, Richard A. Fortey, Richard H. Thomas, Arthropod Relationships, →ISBN, page 283:

     A somewhat detailed, and largely innovative reconstruction of the groundplan of hexapod integumental structure has been worked out by Kukalova-Peck (1991, 1994, 1997, this volume).

   • 2000, Günter P. Wagner, The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, →ISBN, page 513:

     This figure emphasizes the dislocation of the pigment bands and presents the so-called nymphalid groundplan: the set of pattern elements out of which butterflies build their wing patterns (Nijhout 1991). The groundplan thus consists of eight parallel series of pattern elements: one for each band of each of the three symmetry systems, a row of border ocelli, and a set of submarginal bands. Each wing cell has a representative of each of these pattern elements so the overall groundplan can be viewed as a serial repetition of the same set of pattern elements.

   • 2009, Tod F. Stuessy, Plant Taxonomy: The Systematic Evaluation of Comparative Data, →ISBN:

     His groundplan/divergence method was used by other students and workers (e.g., Mickel 1962; Scora 1967; and Fryxell 1971) and represented the principal thrust of cladistics among botanists at that time.