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Domes

Domes are curved structures that cover important buildings. They are strong structures that were originally made of stone but later used arches and then thinner materials to reduce weight as domes grew taller. Key innovations included the Pantheon's coffered dome, Mihrimah Mosque's pierced dome, tension rings added to St. Peter's Basilica, double domes creating the illusion of greater height, geodesic domes using triangles rather than arches, and retractable domes for sports stadiums.

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Himanshu Chinchole
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96 views9 pages

Domes

Domes are curved structures that cover important buildings. They are strong structures that were originally made of stone but later used arches and then thinner materials to reduce weight as domes grew taller. Key innovations included the Pantheon's coffered dome, Mihrimah Mosque's pierced dome, tension rings added to St. Peter's Basilica, double domes creating the illusion of greater height, geodesic domes using triangles rather than arches, and retractable domes for sports stadiums.

Uploaded by

Himanshu Chinchole
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Domes

• Domes are curved structures with no


angles and no corners, and they cover
some of our most important structures.
• Despite their thinness, domes are some of
the strongest and stiffest structures in
existence today.
Columns
• Before domes, there
were rectangular
buildings.
Almost all ancient
buildings had roofs
supported by forests of
columns. The columns
prevented the heavy
roofs from collapsing, but
they left very little open
interior space.
The Dome in Rome!!!!
• Soon, ancient
engineers began
experimenting with
arches.
Around 100 A.D., Roman
builders rotated an arch
in a circle and discovered
that it created a strong
three-dimensional shape
-- the monolithic dome.
In time, they were
capping churches and
mosques with this new
and brilliant design.
The Pantheon
• The earliest domes
were made of stone.
The earliest masonry
dome, the Pantheon, was
so heavy that engineers
carved intricate shapes,
called coffers, along the
walls to reduce the weight
of the enormous
structure. They also
gouged a hole, called an
oculus, at the top, which
created a daily light show
for which the Pantheon is
still famous.
Mihrimah Mosque
• As domes grew taller and
taller, they became heavier
and heavier.
By 532 A.D., ancient engineers
realized that they could lighten
their domes by scooping out
the spaces between the
arches. This design allowed
sunlight to pour into the dome
without weakening the
structure. The Mihrimah
Mosque, built in 1555 by the
great architect, Sinan, is
pierced with 161 windows!
Dome Rings

• When the dome on St. Peter's Basilica began cracking in


the early 18th century because of its weight, Vatican
engineers tied several iron rings, called tension rings,
around the structure to prevent it from collapsing.
Fortunately, their emergency fix stood the test of time.
The Double Dome

• By the early 1400s, Roman engineers began building two domes in


one to create the illusion of even greater height. The U.S. Capitol
dome, built in 1793, gets its height from this engineering sleight of
hand. The large outer dome is a thin shell, held up by a ring of
curved iron ribs. Underneath it all is a smaller, self-supporting
dome, visible only from the inside.
The Geodesic Dome

• In the 1950s, a radical new design -- the geodesic dome


-- changed the way engineers looked at domes for the
first time in 2,000 years. Invented by American engineer
and architect Buckminster Fuller, the geodesic dome is a
partial sphere shape structured from a series of
triangles, rather than a series of arches.
The Rectractable Dome

• A new generation of domes equipped with


retractable roofs, like the Toronto SkyDome, has
become a popular choice for sports stadiums
throughout the world.

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