Monday, February 7, 2011

Williams Heather IAR 221 Reading Response 4


A couple examples of Roman Arches represents the advancement in technology and power to Rome


Arches were important to the construction and technology of water transportation in ancient Rome. This system represented power for their empire because they were able to control the direction of the water. This also corresponds with the idea of mapping out cities or buildings with walkways providing a space where we are to walk.

The use of arches was a big step forward in technology for the Romans because they were able to support more weight and make much longer bridges across an area because the arches were much wider than columns so this hollowed out excess weight and the weight from the height of stacked arches was pushed to the sides and directed down the center of the vertical axis. This is much more economical than the use of columns because it would have taken about four to five columns to hold up the weight of a distance that one arch supports. 


This is an example of to archways before an entrance. These arches are not holding anything up but themselves; however, the represent how the technology of an arch uses them to distribute weight through the sides. 


2 comments:

  1. Link quotes from the book to the reading comprehension. Then translation of text to the image and relate these concepts to structure outside of class makes an "A" reading comp.

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  2. Good start...needs another image (work on your image quality) and a title and concept. Could use citations from roth + ching for connections to the readings.

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