From the outside, the monument seems dense but allows a hollow interior: this Roman technique can be seen in Trajan’s Column, which accommodates a spiral staircase within its shaft. The Romans invented and utilized a system of interlocking brick arches, vaults, and piers to enable the drum’s even weight distribution and support. 4 The drum’s solid appearance conceals its hollow interiors while maintaining its strength. Though made of concrete, it is deceivingly light - the thicker sections of the wall accommodate empty, semicircular spaces. The Pantheon’s drum, is a massive, cylindrical structure that forms the bulk of the monument. 3 In antiquity, construction involved refinement and compensation, especially when creating a monumental structure like the Pantheon.ĭrawing showing the exterior and cross-section of the Pantheon. 2 After the drum was constructed, the rectangular intermediate block was created to connect the circular part of the structure to the temple-like porch. For the Pantheon, such adjustments included varying shaft heights and widths. 1 Since the projects were distributed to different constructors, builders expected to accommodate some inconsistencies. The columns, which had to be shipped overseas, ended up shorter by 10 feet and had to be accommodated by a lower porch. Research has proved that the difference in measurements were most likely because they outsourced materials and labor from several locations. Interestingly enough, studies showed that the columns’ heights and widths vary from column to column. The Corinthian capital gives the structure an intricate, decorative quality that starkly contrasts with the smooth, heavy shaft below.

The shafts (cylindrical part of the column) are made of Egyptian granite, while the capitals (decorative top of the column) and bases were carved from white Greek marble. Shows architecture influenced by traditional Greek temples, including colonnade holding up the triangular pediment.Īt the front of the Pantheon, sixteen, monolithic columns form the monument’s well-known portico. On the pages that follow, ARCHITECT presents highlights from the show.Front, exterior view of the Pantheon. Stern, who continue to feel Piranesi's pull. 14, “Piranesi as Designer,” curated by Wilton-Ely and by Sarah Lawrence, includes more than 100 etchings, original drawings, and decorative objects by Piranesi, as well as works by contemporary architects like Peter Eisenman and Robert A.M. At the root of this eclecticism, writes his biographer John Wilton-Ely, lay “Piranesi's belief in the prerogative of the designer's imagination.”Ī new exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York will shed light on this neglected aspect of Piranesi's legacy. In his designs for side tables and chimneypieces, candelabra and church altars, fantastic capricci emerge from mingled Roman, Greek, Etruscan, and Egyptian motifs. As early as his formative years in Venice, Piranesi was starting to develop an idiosyncratic, profusely Baroque style as a rebuke to the current fashion for ornamental restraint. Less well known, however, than Piranesi's work as a graphic artist is his work as a designer of architecture, interiors, and furnishings. Piranesi's Carceri d'Invenzione (“Imaginary Prisons”), 16 surreal depictions of cavernous interiors with bizarre machinery and endlessly repeating staircases and arches, hold a strong appeal today for viewers schooled in science fiction and M.C. These etchings, which exaggerate the grand scale and crumbling decay of Rome's ancient monuments, helped establish the Romantic image of the city that persisted in Europe through the 19th century (Lord Byron, for instance, evoked a Piranesian Rome-a dark, overgrown “chaos of ruins”-in his wildly popular poem “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”). Piranesi gained fame with the 135 vedute he printed from the 1740s through the 1770s. Inspired by the “speaking ruins” all around him-eloquent, tantalizing fragments of the classical past-Piranesi took up chalk and pen and began to compose dramatic architectural scenes of Rome, infused with his knowledge of archaeology and ancient history (Piranesi was an accomplished antiquarian), but more important, by his rich, almost febrile, imagination. One way the young architect could support himself through the downturn was by producing vedute, or views, of the city as tourist souvenirs. Born near Venice and trained in the building arts by his uncle, a master architect and engineer, the ambitious Giambattista headed to Rome at the age of 20-just as a major construction boom was tapering off.

But if that's supposed to be an insult, consider the extraordinary, paper-based career of Giovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi (1720–1778). It is a common sneer against avant-garde architects that most of their work exists only on paper.

Piranesi architecture