Roof lantern
architectural element
A roof lantern is a daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure.
A lantern roof will generally mean just the roof of a lantern structure in the West, but has a special meaning in Indian architecture (mostly Buddhist, and stretching into Central Asia and eastern China), where it means a dome-like roof raised by sets of four straight beams placed above each other, "arranged in diminishing squares", and rotated with each set. Normally such a "lantern" is enclosed and provides no light at all.
The term roof top lantern is sometimes used to describe the lamps on roofs of taxis in Japan, designed to reflect the cultural heritage of Japanese paper lanterns.
History
The glazed lantern was developed during the Middle Ages, one notable medieval example being that atop the 14th-century Octagon Tower at Ely Cathedral in England. Roof lanterns of masonry and glass were used in Renaissance architecture, such as in principal cathedrals. In 16th-century France and Italy, they began usage in orangeries, an early form of a conservatory structure with tall windows and a glazed roof section for wintering citrus trees and other plants in non-temperate climates.
Post-Renaissance roof lanterns were made of timber and glass and were often prone to leaking.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roof lantern” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.