Books about Roman architecture generally show the typical Roman villa, which – AFAIK – is very suitable for the mild climate of the Mediterranean.
Yet when their empire expanded, they were confronted with the vastly different weather of, e.g. Switzerland or the British Isles. Is there any surviving evidence about how the Romans adapted their architecture to cope with the harsher weather of these regions or did they just build in the same style they used near Rome?
It is difficult to draw too straight of a line to climate, but there was certainly variation in architecture across the empire. The "classic" Italian villa form was a centered around courtyards surrounded by rooms and hallways--the Getty Villa in California, which is based on a villa in Herculaneum, is known as a very well done reconstruction. These villas certainly existed throughout the empire, but were rather less common, particularly in the northwest provincial area of northern Gaul, Britain and the Rhine frontier. There were buildings like Fishburne Palace, but more common was the "winged corridor" type such as that found at Shakenoak. This has been connected to colder climate, but I fond that a tad spurious.
More definite is the expanded use of heated floorings. In Italy that were largely confined to baths, but in the northern provinces they would be found in many more domestic contexts, such as living and greeting areas.
A good work on the topic of domestic architecture is Domnic Perring's The Roman House in Britain. Not much is dedicated to climate specifically because, frankly, there isn't that much that can be directly related to climate.
As a related question, which aspects of Roman culture (i.e. clothing, religious practices, ceremonies, etc.) changed to accommodate differences in climate and locally available resources?
