Roman Architecture

A detailed Summary of Roman Architecture

The architectural style of Rome was firmly rooted in the Hellenistic traditions. However, Roman culture is probably more accurately reflected in the development of new engineering skills and secular monuments. The style and construction progress of Roman architecture was different from other styles, even though the origin of their ideas came from the Greek architecture. The Romans were first to use math seriously for the arches, bridges, aqueducts, roof, and mainly the dome. The Romans took the ideas of architecture from other countries and adjusted it, so there were no support beams needed and the buildings were able to stand for thousands of years without really needing restoring. The modern nineteenth century buildings were not able to last for even 100 years without being restored, unlike the Roman's architecture which stood for thousands of years afterwards. The arched structure is one reason that the Roman's bridges were advanced for their time.

The Romans were advanced in their ways of making a permanent bridge. First, they made a boat bridge which consisted of boats lain side by side. From the boat bridge, work began on the permanent bridge. It was to be made of wood and supported on stone towers called piers

One special feature of Roman design was the combined use of arches. The arch is the central revolutionary concept of Roman architecture. With its development, the Romans bypass the earlier building concepts of vertical and horizontal, support and load. The arch makes possible a new idea of space. The Romans didn't need the columns, but they put the columns in for looks. There were two forms of arches, semicircular and triumphal arch. The semicircular arch was used more fluently than the triumphal arch. The semicircular arch was an arch that formed like a half circle. The Triumphal arch was a form of arch that had three arches with support beams that separated the arches. A dome was just a network of arches. The Romans were the first to complete the feat of the dome without columns and the Pantheon is one famous example standing after five thousand years. The Pantheon is one of the first domes ever built. It was a circular temple dedicated to all gods. The arches were usually built of brick, but in the later years of Rome, the arches were built of cement. To support the tremendous weight of the arches, it was necessary to provide a way of transmitting the force to massive piers and ultimately to the foundation of the arch. The Romans acheived this feat through the use of the keystone block. The force was directed down on to the top of the keystone. Because of its shape, the force was translated to the voussoir blocks of the arch which in turn translated the force through the post to the piers. During the construction, the vousoirs were supported by a temporary wooden frame until the keystone was inserted. The voussoir is bricks that form the arch and the keystone is the stone that is put in the middle of the arch. The temporary frame of the arch was wooden, the brick or cement were put on top of the frame and removed when the mortar or cement dried. The dome was a series of arches meeting at their highest point. The dome was built of concrete placed on a temporary wooden frame like the arch and it needed no columns for support. The dome was often placed on top of arches to split the weight. The dome was built from bottom to top in sections and one section was dried before moving on to the next section, so the weight would not cause the dome to collapse. The roof structure was unique compared to others because it needed no support columns.

which were to stand in the river. A Cofferdam was a double skinned box made of planks with the sp

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Approximate Word count = 1671
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science