the.com/atrium
the room that learned to hold the sky indoors without anyone noticing the trick
means A central, often skylit open space inside a building — and, in anatomy, one of the heart's two upper chambers that receive incoming blood.
from From Latin atrium, the central hall of a Roman house, open to the sky through a roof-hole (the compluvium) that let rain fall into a pool below. The word's deeper root is uncertain; one old guess ties it to ater, 'black,' as if the room were named for walls smoked by the hearth fire that once stood there — but that story is more tradition than proof. Anatomists later borrowed the architectural sense, treating the heart's receiving chambers as little entrance-halls for the blood.
- latin root
- named for soot-blackened Roman entrance halls
- heart duty
- two atria collect blood before the ventricles fire
- plant version
- some are jungles with their own weather
- open roof
- Roman atriums had a hole catching rain
pantheon rome — ancient roman temple with a 142-foot oculus opening to the sky, built 126 ad
getty center los angeles — modern museum with a central open-air courtyard surrounded by galleries, opened 1997