No urban settlement is more linked with the notion of time and its poetic associations of permanence and decay than Rome—observed over centuries rather than years. In stark contrast, much of American construction today, including my own work, is generally reliant on swift construction and inexpensive materials. Understandably, much of the knowledge and direct references to nondurable materials such as ancient Roman timber structures have largely vanished. Briefly, I will investigate and materialize an imagined but plausible set of interconnected ephemeral structures consisting of the false-work (scaffolding, centering, formwork) necessary for the realization of a venerable ancient complex. The resulting three-dimensional “ghost building,” in its entirety, will expose a dynamic dialogue between these temporary timber exoskeletons and the embedded force concentrations of the massive extant masonry structures selected. Clearly, this conjectural approach is not a re-creation toward any idea of rationalized perfection but rather it seeks other architectures relevant to a contemporary practice.