Customer Reviews

Building Big: Domes

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You probably don't have a dome on top of your home, but some of the grandest and oldest buildings do. It was not until the Romans that large domes on large classical buildings because common and successful. Many of the Roman domes still survive today, a testimony to the technology of the day. For the Romans, a dome was just a rotated arch, a building component they understood well. As domes grew larger, limitations were discovered but with modern techniques, domes large enough to cover sports stadium are now common.

David Macaulay seems to explain everything in a way that ordinary people can understand, illustrated with his quick on-camera sketches. Domes is one of a series of five how-it-was-done episodes in the David Macaulay series Building Big. Other large objects covered are Bridges, Tunnels, Dams, and Sky Scrapers.

The information regarding the architectural structure of domes is presented in a simple way which helps understanding. The addition of art works helps to place the architecture in a historical timeframe making the dvd very beautiful to watch.

If this were made for children, it's for the older ones. I can see tweens watching it and learning why they need to take math and science classes seriously. For younger children, there is no way this could compete with that Blue Dog or Power Rangers.
This work starts off with the Houston Astrodome before it speaks of the Ancient Romans and move chronologically. This is clearly meant to grab the interest of modern, and probably male, viewers.
Because so many will reject anything that purely discusses science, myself included, this work can be commended for bringing history into the discussion. The work speaks of Hadrian and George Washington wanting domes for all kinds of reasons that had little to do with architecture for architecture's sake. The work is pan-historical and looks at domes in three continents.
As much as I applaud the documentary makers, this is still a boring work. Unless you just love you some geometry, then you might yawn through this. I'm glad this work exists, but I pushed stop on my DVD player because I can't let this interfere with missing an episode of "Cops."