Rules · Roofs · Façades · Walls
Divide each wall into bays with pilaster strips and end each bay in a semicircular gable, the zakomara, that follows the curve of the barrel vault behind it; shape the roof to the gables.
usually 3 zakomary per façade, one per bay
The zakomara is the Byzantine barrel vault made visible on the outside: where a vault meets an outer wall, the wall is finished in an arch rather than a straight cornice. The result is the rhythmic, scalloped silhouette of the medieval Russian church, from the white-stone churches of Vladimir to the cathedrals of the Kremlin.
In later centuries the zakomary were often hidden under simple hipped roofs, better suited to snow; restorers have since uncovered many of them.
Lift the dome on a cylindrical or polygonal drum pierced with windows between the ring of the pendentives and the springing of the dome, to light the centre of the church and to make the dome visible from afar.
drum height ≈ ⅓–1 × its radius (Byzantine); much taller in Russian churches
Crown the four corner bays of a cross-in-square with smaller domes on drums around the great central dome, making a five-domed quincunx.
Lift each dome on a tall drum and give it a bulbous outer shell that swells beyond the drum and draws up to a point under the cross; build the shell as a light timber frame sheathed in metal over the structural vault below.
onion Ø ≈ 1.2–1.3 × drum Ø; height ≈ 2 × its base radius
Mount from the walls to the drum in stepped tiers of decorative gables with pointed ogee heads, the kokoshniki, each tier set back and narrower than the one below, so that the body of the church rises into its domes in a pyramid of arches.
Instead of a dome, crown the church with a tall octagonal pyramid of masonry (the shatyor, or tent) set on an octagon over the square body, with kokoshniki at the transitions and a small cupola at the top.
Ascension, Kolomenskoye (1532): ≈ 62 m high; cube → octagon → tent → cupola
Set the kremlin on the high ground where two rivers meet, so that water guards two sides; wall it with towers at the corners and gates, dig a moat along the landward side, and put within it the cathedral, the prince’s palace and the metropolitan’s court.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Let the roofline follow the vaults”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/zakomary. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.