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The Ancient Roman Dome: A Timeless Engineering Feat
Ancient Romans technological mastery, engineering inventiveness, and architectural creativity ushered the current era of the architectural dome.
A vast semi-spherical cover rising tall from the perimeter structure. Light floods in from the oculus or from the side openings. Perhaps the surfaces are elaborated with decorations or frescoes. Solemnity, awe, and wonder fill a perceptive and attentive visitor.
The experience of walking into a domed space is always interesting I would say. Even if the dome has a simple surface, something changes in the space, its perception, and its experience. Perhaps, this happens also because the perception of space is very much linked to scale, so how we process and react to a rounded surface up in the air is special and unusual.
Origins
The definition of the ‘dome’ structure is articulated as it includes different parameters such as geometry, construction type, and overall composition. Generally speaking, it could simply be defined as a ‘hollow-curved-roof structural element’.
For this reason, the first recorded “domed roof” has been considered belonging to a hut formed of mammoth tusks found in Mezhirich, Ukraine and dated between 19,280 and 11,700 BC (Paleolithic times). The dome structure solution was probably incidental, as those people built with what available local material they found. Similarly, it seems that in Central Asia humble homes were built with un-fired bricks as far back as the 3rd millennium BC.
Examples of domed structures have been found since then and basically across most of the world: in present-day Alaska from the Thule people; in the Ancient Near East such as in present-day Khuzestan province of Iran; in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, such as in Egypt and Sardinia.
An interesting fact to be noted is that the extensive use of a domed roof was, early on, for humble use buildings such as poor people dwellings or granaries. This will massively change later…
