Co er EN

Introduction
History
Asian architecture
Gallery
Co er
Connected to: Ceiling Architecture Rome
See also
Footnotes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
External links
A co er (or co ering) in architecture is a series of sunken
panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a
ceiling, so t or vault.[1] A series of these sunken panels was
often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called
caissons ("boxes"), or lacunaria ("spaces, openings"),[2] so that
a co ered ceiling can be called a lacunar ceiling: the strength
of the structure is in the framework of the co ers.

History
The stone co ers of the ancient Greeks[3] and Romans[4] are
the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE
Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano,
which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with Co ering on the ceiling of the Pantheon (Rome)
beams and cross-beams lying on them, with at panels lling
the lacunae.[5] For centuries, it was thought that wooden co ers were rst made by crossing the wooden
beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaux of the early Renaissance.[6] In 2012, however,
archaeologists working under Andrew Wallace-Hadrill at the House of the Telephus in Herculaneum
discovered that wooden co ered ceilings were constructed in Roman times.[7] Experimentation with the
possible shapes in co ering, which solve problems of mathematical tiling, or tessellation, were a feature
of Islamic as well as Renaissance architecture. The more complicated problems of diminishing the scale of
the individual co ers were presented by the requirements of curved surfaces of vaults and domes.

A prominent example of Roman co ering, employed to lighten the weight of the dome, can be found in
the ceiling of the rotunda dome in the Pantheon, Rome.

Asian architecture
In ancient Chinese wooden architecture, co ering is known as zaojing (Chinese: 藻井; pinyin: zǎojǐng). [8]

Gallery

Co ered plafond at Wawel Castle, Kraków, Poland Co ered ceiling of the Sala dell'Udienza, in the Chapelle
Palazzo Vecchio in Florence Paris

1
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Co ered
ceilings.

Dome
Dropped ceiling
Cove ceiling
Beam ceiling

Footnotes
^ Ching, Francis D.K. (1995). A Visual Dictionary of
Architecture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 30.
ISBN 0-471-28451-3.
^ An alternative, in a description of Domitian's
audience hall by Statius, noted by Ulrich 2007:156,
is laquearia, not a copyist's error, as it appears in
Manilius' Astronomica (1.533, quoted by Ulrich).
^ An example is the main hieron at Samothrace,
where stone ceiling beams of the pronaos carried a
co ered ceiling of marble slabs across a span of
about 6.15 m (J.J. Coulton, Ancient Greek Architects at
Work: Problems of Structure and Design (Cornell
University Press) 1982:147. ISBN 978-0801492341
^ Roman wooden co ered ceilings are discussed in
Roger Bradley Ulrich, Roman Woodworking, ch.
"Roo ng and ceilings" (Yale University Press) 2007.
^ Illustrated in Ulrich, g 8.27.
^ "co er". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved
2007-10-17.
^ Hooper, John (2012-07-23). "House of the Telephus
Relief: raising the roof on Roman real estate". The
Guardian. Retrieved 2015-01-16. “Buried by Vesuvius
nearly 2,000 years ago, archaeologists at
Herculaneum have excavated and carried out the rst-
ever full reconstruction of the timber roof of a Roman
villa”
^ Ching, Francis D.K.; et al. (2007). A Global History of
Architecture. New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 787.
ISBN 0-471-26892-5.

External links
U.S. National Capitol

Look up co er in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Categories

This page is based on a Wikipedia article written by contributors (read/edit).

Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Cover photo is available under CC BY 3.0 license. Credit:

This photo was taken by Eusebius (Guillaume Piolle).

Feel free to reuse it, but always credit me as the author as speci ed below.

(see original le).

Tell your friends about Wikiwand!

Gmail Facebook Twitter Link

Home About Us Press Site Map Terms Of Service Privacy Policy