Constructing late antique barrel brick vaults without formwork on the territory of today’s Serbia

Abstract

Throughout the development of architecture, special forms of building processes can be noted in which formworks had obviously not been used. This paper will deal with the first such examples on the territory of Serbia, in the form of the simplest barrel vaults and a similar, conoid type of vaults. When it comes to barrel vaults, the centre of the curvature stretches along the same horizontal line, and the radius of the curvature has a constant value. When it comes to conoid vaults, aside from the fact that the centre can be stretched along a line with a certain slope, there is also a decrease of the radius of the curve toward one end of the vault.