engleski

Architecture of St. Donat in Zadar (Croatia) and spatial model of its structural system

Considering a relation between an architectural form and the respective structural system, our attention was attracted by the church of S. Donat in Zadar, a pre-Romanesque rotunda built on the ruins of the Roman forum of antique city of Zadar. The church of S. Donat (former Holy Trinity) is a well preserved ninth-century building, with the presumed first phase of the construction completed in the eighth century. Free from almost every decoration and every non-structural elements, it displays clearly its architectural concept. The analysis of structural behaviour of the rotunda explaines its structural logic, and ascertaines plausibility of the two-phase construction hypothesis. By examining akin centrally-planned buildings in Europe, we try to understand the way of thinking of the builders in these past times, which we consider a condicio sine qua non for any intervention in a historical building.

St. Donat; Zadar; Croatian pre-Romanesque; architectural form; structural system; mode of building; phases of construction; spatial models; Medieval repair

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