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 which were to stand in the river.
A Cofferdam was a double skinned box made of planks with the space between the inner and outer planks being filled with clay. This box was floated into position and then weighted down until it sank. The water was pumped out with buckets or a device called an Archimedean screw or tympanum The Cofferdams were built, so the laborers could erect the piers without going under water. First the piles of the Cofferdam, a piece of wood sharpened like a pencil, were driven into the riverbed, then pumped. When the pumping was finished, each pier stood on a foundation of tar covered piles and was constructed of carefully cut stones on the inside. The mortar used between the stones contained pozzolana, a volcanic ash. When the piers reached a height of 30 feet above the river, wooden arches were hoisted into its place between them. A wooden road was nailed to the arches and covered with a layer of earth. The finished road stood over sixty feet above the river. For major or busy bridges sometimes stone went in place of wood. The semicircular arch was usually used for bridges. Aqueducts were like a bridge but built over land and carried pipes of water instead of a roadbed. Rome alone needed 340 million gallons of water per day to supply its great arched baths and other needs.
The Term Paper on Roman Arches 2 Cornell And Matthews
Roman Architecture Many centuries before the birth of Christ, the city of Rome grew, prospered, and developed into a thriving Republic. As in most cultures, Rome's buildings became more elaborate and impressive. They developed fantastic building technologies and ideas. The feats of Roman engineers were groundbreaking, and many structures built by this culture still stand today. With knowledge ...
Surveyors made an imaginary line with measuring sticks and a chorobate, a leveling instrument like the level used today, to make a straight line for a profile map. The surveyors designed a plan to keep the water from rushing too fast. They made a system of a fall of six inches for every one hundred feet and often added long detours to avoid a too sudden descent. Due to the materials and construction methods, many of the aqueducts survived and are still used today. Sometimes a route of an aqueduct required that a short tunnel be dug through a hill. Every twenty yards vertical shafts were sunk from the surface of the hill to the level of the proposed aqueduct. The depths of the shafts were measured from the profile map. The engineers used the profile map to construct foundations up to the imaginary line, then built the piers for fifty feet, then put the stone arches in. The reason the arches were built high over the ground was to prevent people from stealing or poisoning the water. The pipes were made with the inner surfaces lined with hard cement to prevent leaks, then a rectangular pipe was built to cover the water pipes. When the aqueduct hit a hill underground pipes were built, the profile maps measured the depths of the new pipes to be placed. When the shafts were dug a pulley was put over the opening of the shaft to lower men, tools, and materials needed down the shafts. When the tunnel was dug and connected with the other shafts, masons lined it with cement and stone, closed the shaft with dirt, then moved on to the next shaft to repeat the process. The aqueduct was supported by a continuous row of arches built on tall square piers which rested on deep foundations. The laborers used bricks and granite blocks to form the foundations, piers, arches, and the rectangular pipes. The masons used hard cement and blocks to make pipes that held water and underground water ways.
The Essay on Technology: Ancient Rome And Roman Military Engineering
Technology and engineering were among Rome’s most famous achievements. In your paper, describe and explain the importance of Roman technology and engineering, especially as it related to making its giant cities livable. Cover at least two separate kinds of Roman technology and/or engineering. The paper must be two to three pages in length and formatted according to APA style. You must use at ...
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. The Romans were also known for their roof structure which, unlike the Greek structures, needed no support columns.
The Term Paper on Domus Aurea and the Innovations in the Roman Art
... to other regions and to other media. Roman builders not only developed the arch, vault, and dome but pioneered the creative use of concrete. ... in peri-styles but at fragments of buildings – columns supporting half-pediments, double stories of columns supporting nothing at all – painted on the same ...
Their advanced arch served the purpose of the column, though the Romans still left the columns in place in some buildings for the looks. There were three kinds of roofs; dome, traditional, and vaulted. The dome was explained in the previous paragraph. The tradition roof is like the ones today, but during the Roman Empire it was made of stones and concrete. Those materials were heavy, so the Romans had to find a way to keep it from collapsing. The Romans tried arches to split the weight instead of the Greek way of using the columns. Today most Greek buildings don’t have a roof and there are only a few columns remaining to be seen, but the Roman buildings are still standing in a good condition. The arches split the weight evenly, unlike the columns which enabled the roof to stand with minimal stress. A vault is an elongated arch that is made of many arches lain side by side. The width that can be spanned by an arch or barrel vault is unlimited, but the wider arches or vaults are, the higher they become. To achieve greater spans with low ceilings, barrel vaults were built side by side, supported on side walls pierced with arches. Groined vaults were used more often, consisting of two barrel vaults intersecting at right angles.
The Term Paper on National building code
This part of the Code deals with safety from fire. It specifies the demarcation of fire zones, restrictions on construction of buildings in each fire zone, classification of buildings based on occupancy, types of building construction according to fire resistance of the structural and non-structural components and other restrictions and requirements necessary to minimise danger to life from fire, ...
These vaults could span a large rectangular area, with supporting pillars needed only at the four points of intersection. By increasing the number of intersecting vaults, a dome shape could be achieved, by combining various vaults and arches, a new style of architecture developed. An example is the Colosseum. The building is essentially a Roman structure of arches and vaults. Temporary wooden frames were needed to keep the structure in place until the cement or mortar dried. The Romans were very gifted in architecture. The Romans, even if they didn’t need the columns and other ideas from the Greeks, still used these accessories for appearance and remained firmly rooted in the Hellenistic traditions. The Romans pioneered innovations in architecture , producing ground-breaking designs that allowed them to make advances in many areas. They also left an everlasting impact on architecture, as Roman styles in buildings are found all over the world.
