Dome through History

Rekha Jain

Generic True Arch and Corbel Arch

Construction

• A dome can be thought of as an arch which has been rotated around its central vertical axis. Thus domes, like arches, have a great deal of structural strength when properly built and can span large open spaces without interior supports. Corbel domes achieve their shape by extending each horizontal layer of stones inward slightly farther than the previous, lower, one until they meet at the top. These are sometimes called false domes. True, or real, domes are formed with increasingly inward-angled layers of voussoirs which have ultimately turned 90 degrees from the base of the dome to the top.

• When the base of the dome does not match the plan of the supporting walls beneath it such as a circular dome on a square bay, techniques are employed to transition between the two. The simplest technique is to use diagonal lintels across the corners of the walls to create an octagonal base. Another is to use arches called squinches to span the corners, which can support more weight. The invention of pendentives superseded the squinch technique. Pendentives are triangular sections of a sphere used to transition from the flat surfaces of supporting walls to the round base of a dome.

History

• Corbel Domes and true domes have been found in the ancient Middle East in modest buildings and tombs. The construction of the first technically advanced true domes began in the Roman Architectural Revolution when they were frequently used by the Romans to shape large interior spaces of temples and public buildings, such as the Pantheon. This tradition continued unabated after the adoption of Christianity in the Byzantine (East Roman) religious and secular architecture, culminating in the revolutionary pendentive dome of the 6th-century church Hagia Sophia.

History

• Squinches, the technique of making a transition from a square shaped room to a circular dome, was most likely invented by the ancient Persians. The Sassanid Empire initiated the construction of the first large-scale domes in Persia, with such royal buildings as the Palace of Ardashir, Sarvestan and Ghal'eh Dokhtar. With the Muslim conquest of Greek-Roman Syria, the Byzantine architectural style became a major influence on Muslim societies. Indeed the use of domes as a feature of Islamic architecture has gotten its roots from Roman Greater-Syria.

• Since pre historic time domes were not used as important feature of building

• They extensively used mud - brick or adobe domes • Examples of true domes and stone pendentives

domes in Mesopotamia culture are visible• Stone corbelled domes were found in sites from

middle east to western europe• Ancient Greek buildings were featured with

wooden shallow wooden triangular domes

• The technique of domical like structure, later shape derived as tent were developed for temporary structures in traditional Central Asia later adopted by Alexender the Great

• Roman Byzantine architecture was great inspired by this shape of dome

• The early period of Hellinistic era, Sicily, the domed / vaults roof made in terracotta, were found in Baths

• The proper domes with technical detailing were developed and extensively used in Public Bath, Temples, church, villas, palaces and tomb

• The massive brick / stone domes were supported at wall further supported by buttresses.

• Domes enhanced the monumental quality of Roman buildings

• As can be seen in remaining of the Pompeii, the domes were extensively used in Bath cold room and warm room in order to enhance the heat or conserve the heat

• Ancient Roman domes constructed in concrete by temporary timber frame support/ centering

• Temple of Mercury constructed with 21.5m dia base. It is the first use of dome to make building as monument before Pantheon

• The Pantheon, a temple in Rome completed by Emperor Hadrian as part of the Baths of Agrippa, is the most famous, best preserved, and largest Roman dome. Dating from the 2nd century, it is an unreinforced concrete dome 43.4 meters wide resting on a circular wall, or rotunda, 6 meters thick. This rotunda, made of brick-faced concrete, contains a large number of relieving arches and is not solid. Seven interior niches and the entrance way divide the wall structurally into eight virtually independent piers. These openings and additional voids account for a quarter of the rotunda wall's volume. The only opening in the dome is the brick-lined oculus at the top, nine meters in diameter, which provides light and ventilation for the interior.

• The shallow coffering in the dome accounts for a less than five percent reduction in the dome's mass, and is mostly decorative. The aggregate material hand-placed in the concrete is heaviest at the base of the dome and changes to lighter materials as the height increases, dramatically reducing the stresses in the finished structure. In fact, many commentators cite the Pantheon as an example of the revolutionary possibilities for monolithic architecture provided by the use of Roman pozzolana concrete. However, vertical cracks seem to have developed very early, such that in practice the dome acts as an array of arches with a common keystone, rather than as a single unit.

• The exterior step-rings used to compress the "haunches" of the dome, which would not be necessary if the dome acted as a monolithic structure, may be an acknowledgement of this by the builders themselves. Such buttressing was common in Roman arch construction. Hadrian is believed to have held court in the Pantheon rotunda using the main apse opposite the entrance as a tribune, which may explain its very large size. No other dome built in the Imperial era came close to the span of the dome of the Pantheon. It remained the largest dome in the world for more than a millennium and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.

• Construction of domes in the Muslim world reached its peak during the 16th – 18th centuries, when the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires, ruling an area of the World compromising North Africa, the Middle East and South- and Central Asia, applied lofty domes to their religious buildings to create a sense of heavenly transcendence. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Shah Mosque and the Badshahi Mosque are primary examples of this style of architecture.

• In the 4th century, Roman domes proliferated due to changes in the way domes were constructed, including advances in centering techniques and the use of brick ribbing. The so-called "Temple of Minerva Medica", for example, used brick ribs along with step-rings and lightweight pumice aggregate concrete to form a decagonal dome. The material of choice in construction gradually transitioned during the 4th and 5th centuries from stone or concrete to lighter brick in thin shells. The use of ribs stiffened the structure, allowing domes to be thinner with less massive supporting walls. Windows were often used in these walls and replaced the oculus as a source of light, although buttressing was sometimes necessary to compensate for large openings. The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza has windows beneath the dome and nothing but paired columns beneath that, using a surrounding barrel vault to buttress the structure.

• 6th-century church building by the Emperor Justinian used the domed cross unit on a monumental scale, in keeping with Justinian's emphasis on bold architectural innovation. His church architecture emphasized the central dome. Centrally planned domed churches had been built since the 4th century for very particular functions, such as palace churches or martyria, with a slight widening of use around 500 AD, but Justinian's architects make the domed brick-vaulted central plan standard throughout the Roman east. This divergence with the Roman west from the second third of the 6th century may be considered the beginning of a "Byzantine" architecture.

• After the Nika Revolt destroyed much of the city of Constantinople in 532, Justinian had the opportunity to rebuild. Both the churches of Hagia Irene ("Holy Peace") and Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom") were burned down. Both had been basilica plan churches and both were rebuilt as domed basilicas, although the Hagia Sophia was rebuilt on a much grander scale.

• The Cross-in-square plan, with a single dome at the crossing or five domes in a quincunx pattern, became widely popular in the Middle Byzantine period. It is the most common church plan from the tenth century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Examples include an early 9th century church in Tirilye, now called the Fatih Mosque, and a palace chapel built around 920, called the Myrelaion. This type of plan, with four columns supporting the dome at the crossing, was best suited for domes less than 7 meters wide and, from the tenth to the 14th centuries, a typical Byzantine dome measured less than 6 meters in diameter. For domes beyond that width, however, variations in the plan were required such as using piers in place of the columns and incorporating further buttressing around the core of the building. In this period, domes were normally built to emphasize separate functional spaces, rather than as the modular ceiling units they had been earlier.

• Another variant of the cross-in-square, the "so-called atrophied Greek cross plan", also provides greater support for a dome than the typical cross-in-square plan by using four piers projecting from the corners of an otherwise square naos, rather than four relatively slender columns. This design was used in the Chora Church of Constantinople in the 12th century after the previous cross-in-square structure was destroyed by an earthquake.

• Examples of the five-domed cross-in-square church in the Late Byzantine style include the Church of Holy, Apostles in Thessaloniki, circa 1329, and the Gračanica monastery, built around 1311 in Serbia. The architect and artisans of the Gračanica monastery church probably came from Thessaloniki and its style reflects Byzantine cultural influence.

• Byzantine domes and techniques of religious architecture spread to the surrounding Christian nations, such as Georgia and Armenia. Armenian church domes were initially wooden structure. Etchmiadzin Cathedral(c. 483) originally had a wooden dome covered by a wooden pyramidal roof before this was replaced with stone construction in 618. Churches with stone domes became the standard type after the 7th century, perhaps benefiting from a possible exodus of stonecutters from Syria, but the long traditions of wooden construction carried over stylistically. Some examples in stone as late as the 12th century are detailed imitations of clearly wooden prototypes.

• Byzantine domes on windowed drums typically incorporated wooden tension rings at several levels within the structures, a technique frequently said to be a later invention of Filippo Brunelleschi. Metal clamps between stone cornice blocks, metal tie rods, and metal chains were also used to stabilize domed construction. Timber belts at the bases of domes help to stabilize the walls below them during earthquakes, but the domes themselves remain vulnerable to collapse.The technique of using double shells for domes, although revived in the Renaissance, originated in Byzantine practice. Roofing for domes ranged from simple ceramic tile to more expensive, more durable, and more form-fitting lead sheeting.

• The Persian invention of the squinch, a series of concentric arches forming a half-cone over the corner of a room, enabled the transition from the walls of a square chamber to an octagonal base for a dome. Previous transitions to a dome from a square chamber existed but were makeshift in quality and only attempted on a small scale, not being reliable enough for large constructions. The squinch enabled domes to be widely used and they move to the forefront of Persian architecture as a result. The ruins of the Palace of Ardashir and Ghal'eh Dokhtar in Fars Province, Iran, built by Ardashir I (224–240) of the Sasanian Empire, have the earliest known examples.

• The three domes of the Palace of Ardashir are 45 feet in diameter and vertically elliptical, each with a central opening or oculus to admit light. The large brick dome of the Sarvestan Palace, also in Fars but later in date, shows more elaborate decoration and four windows between the corner squinches. The building may have been a Fire temple. Instead of using a central oculus in each dome, as at the Palace of Ardashir and as shown in the bas relief found at Kuyunjik, lighting was provided by a number of hollow terracotta cylinders set into the domes at regular intervals. Multiple written accounts from Arabic, Byzantine, and Western medieval sources describe a palace domed structure over the throne of Chosroes decorated in blue and gold. The dome was covered with depictions of the sun, moon, stars, planets, the zodiac, astrapai, and kings, including Chosroes himself. According to Ado and others, the dome could produce rain, and could be rotated with a sound like thunder by means of ropes pulled by horses in a basement. Caravansaries used the domed bay from the Sasanian period to the Qajar dynasty.[

• The earliest known Islamic domes in Persia, such as the Great Mosque of Qom (878) and the tomb of Muhammed b. Musa (976), seem to have continued the rounded Sasanian form. Domed mausoleums contributed greatly to the development and spread of the dome in Persia early in the Islamic period,. By the 10th century, domed tombs had been built for Abbasid caliphs and Shiite martyrs. Pilgrimage to these sites may have helped to spread the for. The earliest surviving example, the Qubbat-al Sulaibiya, was an octagonal structure with a central dome on a drum built around 892 in Samarra.[ The Samanid Mausoleum in Transoxiana dates to no later than 943 and is the first to have squinches create a regular octagon as a base for the dome, which then became the standard practice. The Arab-Ata Mausoleum, also in Transoxiana, may be dated to 977–78 and uses muqarnas between the squinches for a more unified transition to the dome. Cylindrical or polygonal plan tower tombs with conical roofs over domes also exist beginning in the 11th century. The earliest example is the Gonbad-e Qabus tower tomb, 57 meters high and spanning 9.7 meters, which was built in 1007.

• The Il-Khanate legacy also laid the groundwork for a separate architectural style, Timurid Islamic architecture, which later became an inspiration to Mughal architects. During the 14th and 15th century, Timur and his successors adorned Samarkand and other Central-Asian cities with spectacular and stately edifices. The Sanctuary of Ahmed Yasawi, situated in southern Kazakhstan was never finished, but has the largest existing brick dome in Central Asia, measuring 18.2 m in diameter. The dome exterior is covered with hexagonal green glazed tiles with gold patterns.

• At the Timurid capital of Samarkand, nobles and rulers in the 14th and 15th centuries began building tombs with double-shelled domes containing cylindrical masonry drums between the shells. In the Gur-e Amir, built by Timur around 1404, a timber framework on the inner dome supports the outer, bulbous dome. Radial tie-bars at the base of the bulbous dome provide additional structural support. Timber reinforcement rings and rings of stone linked by iron cramps were also used to compensate for the structural problems introduced by using such drum. A miniature painted at Samarkand shows that bulbous cupolas were used to cover small wooden pavilions in Persia by the beginning of the fifteenth century. They gradually gained in popularity.

• Pisa Cathedral, built between 1063 and 1118, includes a high elliptical dome at the crossing of its nave and transept. The dome was one of the first in Romanesque architecture and is considered the masterpiece of Romanesque domes. Rising 48 meters above a rectangular bay, the shape of the dome was unique at the time. The rectangular bay's dimensions are 18 meters by 13.5 meters. Squinches were used at the corners to create an elongated octagon and corbelling used to create an oval base for the dome. The tambour on which the dome rests dates to between 1090 and 1100, and it is likely that the dome itself was built at that time. There is evidence that the builders did not originally plan for the dome and decided on the novel shape to accommodate the rectangular crossing bay, which would make an octagonal cloister vault very difficult. Additionally, the dome may have originally been covered by a lantern tower which was removed in the 1300s, exposing the dome, to reduce weight on foundations not designed to support it. This would have been done no later than 1383, when the Gothic loggetta on the exterior of the dome was added, along with the buttressing arches on which it rests.

• The domed "Decagon" nave of St. Gereon's Basilica in Cologne, Germany, a ten-sided space in an oval shape, was built between 1219 and 1227 upon the remaining low walls of a 4th-century Roman martyrium. The ribbed dome rises four stories and 34.55 meters above the floor, covering an oval area 21 meters long and 16.9 meters wide. It is unique among the twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne, and in European architecture in general, and may have been the largest dome built in this period in Western Europe until the completion of the dome of Florence Cathedral.

• The multi domed church is a typical form of Russian church architecture, which distinguishes Russia from other Orthodox nations and Christian denominations. Indeed, the earliest Russian churches, built just after the Christianization of Kievan Rus', were multi-domed, which has led some historians to speculate about how Russian pre-Christian pagan temples might have looked. Examples of these early churches are the 13-domed wooden Saint Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod and the 25-domed stone Desyatinnaya Church in Kiev. The number of domes typically has a symbolical meaning in Russian architecture, for example 13 domes symbolize Christ with 12 Apostles, while 25 domes means the same with an additional 12 Prophets of the Old Testament. The multiple domes of Russian churches were often comparatively smaller than Byzantine domes.

• The earliest stone churches in Russia featured Byzantine style domes, however by the Early Modern era the onion dome had become the predominant form in traditional Russian architecture. The onion dome is a dome whose shape resembles an onion, after which they are named. Such domes are often larger in diameter than the drum upon which they are set, and their height usually exceeds their width. The whole bulbous structure tapers smoothly to a point. Though the earliest preserved Russian domes of such type date from the 16th century, illustrations from older chronicles indicate that they were at least used since the late 13th century. Like tented roofs, which were combined with and sometimes replaced domes in Russian architecture since the 16th century, onion domes initially were used only in wooden churches and were introduced into stone architecture much later, where their carcasses continued to be made either of wood or metal on top of masonry drums.

• Russian domes are often gilded or brightly painted. A dangerous technique of chemical gilding using mercury had been applied on some occasions until the mid-19th century, most notably in the giant dome of Saint Isaac's Cathedral. The more modern and safe method of gold electroplating was applied for the first time in gilding the domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, the tallest Eastern Orthodox church in the world.

Ottoman Domes

• The Selimiye Mosque in the city of Edirne, Turkey, was the first structure built by the Ottomans which had a larger dome than that of the Hagia Sophia. The dome rises above a square bay. Corner semi-domes convert this into an octagon, which muqarnas transition to a circular base. The dome has an internal diameter of about 31.5 meters, while that of Hagia Sophia averages 31.3 meters. Designed and built by architect Mimar Sinan between 1568 and 1574, when he finished it he was 86 years old, and he considered the mosque to be his masterpiece.

• The rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica occurred under a succession of builders over a span of 120 years. Bramante's initial design was for a Greek cross plan with a large hemispherical dome at the crossing and four smaller domes around it in a quincunx pattern. Among the alternations to the plan made by Giuliano da Sangallo were changing the central dome to be segmental with ribs and 9 meters higher. He strengthened the piers and completed building the pendentives. Michelangelo redesigned the dome to be more in line with that of Brunelleschi's large dome in Florence, with two shells, a mostly brick structure, and three iron chains to resist outward pressure. The dome was later completed by Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana. The double shell dome of St. Peter's Basilica was completed in 1590. Slightly smaller in diameter than those of the Pantheon and Florence Cathedral, the inner dome is hemispherical, while the outer ribbed dome is vertically oval. The outside of the drum is decorated with pairs of columns between the large windows. Its internal diameter is 41.47 meters (136.1 ft) and its external height from the ground to the top of the cross is 136.57 meters (448.1 ft). The dome remains the tallest in the world. The style of the church ushered in what would become known as Baroque architecture, and the dome in particular would have great influence on subsequent designs.

• Islamic rule over northern and central India brought with it the use of domes, which would be constructed with stone, brick and mortar, and iron dowels and cramps. Centering was made from timber and bamboo. The use of iron cramps to join together adjacent stones was known in pre-Islamic India, and was used at the base of domes for hoop reinforcement. The synthesis of styles created by this introduction of new forms to the Hindu tradition of trabeate construction created a distinctive architecture. In contrast to Persian and Ottoman domes, the domes of Indian tombs tend to be more bulbous.

• The earliest examples include the half-domes of the late 13th century tomb of Balban and the small dome of the tomb of Khan Shahid, which were made of roughly cut material and would have needed covering surface finishes. The Alai Dawarza, a gate in the Qutb complex built in 1311, has the first dome in India made of finely dressed stone cut into voussoir blocks. Arches transition a square chamber to an octagon, which transitions to a sixteen-sided polygon through the use of corbelled brackets. The cut stone dome over the tomb of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq (d. 1325) uses alternating rings of shallow and deep stones to produce a better bond with the core material. The use of finely cut stone voussoirs for these domes suggest the migration of masons from the former Seljuk Empire.

• The tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah (d. 1656) in Bijapur is one of the largest masonry domes in the world. Called the Gol Gumbaz, or Round Dome, it has an internal diameter of 41.15 meters and a height of 54.25 meters. The dome was built with layers of brick between thick layers of mortar and rendered on both faces, so that the dome acts as a concrete shell reinforced with bricks. It is 2.6 meters thick at the base. The dome was the most technically advanced to be built in the Deccan, and exemplifies the flowering of art and architecture that occurred during the period of the Adil Shahi Sultanate's greatest extent. Radial cracks were repaired in 1936-7 by the application of reinforcement to the outside of the dome, which was then covered by sprayed concrete. Both the Gol Gumbaz dome and the smaller dome of the Jama Masjid, a 57 foot wide dome also at Bijapur, are above distinctive transition zones consisting of eight intersecting arches, which narrow the openings to be covered.

• St. Paul's Cathedral in London was rebuilt from 1677 to 1708. The crossing dome, designed in several stages by Sir Christopher Wren, had its initiation with the first plans for modifying Old St. Paul's, even before the fire of 1666. It was "a form of church building," John Evelyn recorded in his diary, "not as yet known in England, but of wonderful grace." When finished, the dome was three layers: an inner dome with an oculus, a decorative outer wood dome covered in lead roofing, and a structural brick cone in between. The brick cone ends in a small dome, which supports the cupola and outer roof and the decorated underside of which can be seen through the inner dome's oculus. It rises 365 feet (108 m) to the cross at its summit, but is evocative of the much smaller Tempietto by Bramante.

A modern dome of Bashundhara City,the largest shopping mall of South Asia which situated in Dhaka Bangladesh.

• The current dome over the United States Capitol building, although painted white and crowning a masonry building, is also made of cast iron. The dome was built between 1855 to 1866, replacing a lower wooden dome with copper roofing from 1824. It was completed just two years after the Old St. Louis County Courthouse, which has the first cast iron dome built in the United States. The initial design of the capitol dome was influenced by a number of European church domes, particularly St. Paul's in London, St. Peter's in Rome, the Panthéon in Paris, Les Invalides in Paris, and St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The architect, Thomas U. Walter, designed a double dome interior based on that of the Panthéon in Paris.

• Spanish engineer-architect Eduardo Torroja, with Manuel Sanchez, designed the Market Hall in Algeciras, Spain, with a thin shell concrete dome. Built from 1933–34, the shallow dome is 48 meters wide, 9 centimeters thick, and supported at points around its perimeter. Popularized by a 1955 article on the work of Félix Candela in Mexico, architectural shells had their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, peaking in popularity shortly before the widespread adoption of computers and the finite element method of structural analysis. Notable examples of domes include the Kresge Auditorium at MIT, which has a spherical shell 49 meters wide and 89 millimeters thick, and the Palazzetto dello Sport, with a 59 meter wide dome designed by Pier Luigi Nervi. Early examples used a relatively thick bordering girder to stabilize exposed edges. Alternative stabilization techniques include adding a bend at these edges to stiffen them or increasing the thickness of the shell itself at the edges and near the supports.

• Tension membrane design has depended upon computers, and the increasing availability of powerful computers resulted in many developments being made in the last three decades of the 20th century. Weather-related deflations of some air-supported roofs led David Geiger to develop a modified type, the more rigid "Cabledome", which incorporated Fuller's ideas of tensegrity and aspension rather than being air-supported. The pleated effect seen in some of these domes is the result of lower radial cables stretching between those forming trusses in order to keep the membrane in tension. The lightweight membrane system used consists of four layers: waterproof fiberglass on the outside, insulation, a vapor barrier, then an acoustic insulation layer. This is semitransparent enough to fulfill most daytime lighting needs beneath the dome. The first large span examples were two Seoul, South Korea, sports arenas built in 1986 for the Olympics, one 93 meters wide and the other 120 meters wide. The Georgia Dome, built in 1992 on an oval plan, uses instead a triangulated pattern in a system patented as the "Tenstar Dome". The Millennium Dome was completed as the largest cable dome in the world with a diameter of 320 meters and uses a different system of membrane support, with cables extending down from the 12 masts which penetrate the membrane. The first cable dome to use rigid steel frame panels as roofing instead of a translucent membrane was begun for an athletic center in North Carolina in 1994.