Historic Concrete Shells
The oldest known concrete shell, the Pantheon in Rome, was completed about AD 125, and is still standing. It has a massive concrete dome 43m in diameter, with an oculus at its centre. A monolithic structure, it appears to have been sculpted in place by applying thin layers on top of each other in decreasing diameter. Massively thick at the bottom and thinning (with aerated volcanic pumice as part of the concrete mix) at the top, the Pantheon is a remarkable feat of engineering.
Read more about this topic: Concrete Shell
Famous quotes containing the words historic, concrete and/or shells:
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“We are going to pull out the plug. We have reached the point where shells do not hurt us any more.”
—Michel Aoun (b. 1935)