Roman builders · 125 · Architecture
Core Mechanism
Haydn's innovation was making the constraint MORE restrictive (staying in one key longer) to force MORE differentiation, not less.
Kernel Engagement
Works within the kernel’s native ground; the structural gap is present but never encountered.
Evidence
The sphere-in-cylinder constraint (1:1 ratio) forces all structural systems into existence — cofferring depth, density stratification, and oculus diameter are structurally determined by the geometric law, not independently chosen.
Territory
Despite structural sophistication, the announced content is cosmic space and divine light, not structural performance itself. The dome's engineering serves the rotunda's symbolic program — the structure enables the space and disappears into it.
Constitutive depth
The work operates within gravity's constraints rather than generating endogenous ones. The geometric nesting is the architect's chosen vocabulary; gravity's demands (span-depth coupling) are what make that vocabulary structurally necessary, but the constraints emerge from the design commitment, not from gravity's operation generating unforeseen consequences.
Legibility
The structural logic is necessity exposure — any observer can perceive that the cofferring, material transitions, and oculus are structurally determined responses to the dome's span. The mechanism is legible because physics made it visible, not because concealment was programmatically refused.