The technology of ancient Roman architectures

The technology of ancient Roman architectures

[pic 1]

1. Introduction

There are two reasons for me to write this topic. The first one is that we have learned the Baths of Caracalla, Roman Aqueducts, and the Pantheon, which show parts of the technology of Roman architecture in class. The second reason is that I have been to Rome. And what I saw there are lots of remains which are still preserved well today which impresses me a lot.

[pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]

1. What is ancient Roman architecture?

First of all, what is ancient Roman architecture? According to Professor Diana E. E. Kleiner from Yale, all the ancient Roman buildings share in common the following features. They have columns, walls and some of them serve as structure function which hold up the flat or sloping ceilings and the other are just for decoration.[1] The detailed definition is that the architectures which are created by the Romans, extend to the Mediterranean Coast and become a new style.[2]

1. History

In my opinion, the architecture is a form of expression under some specific system. Therefore, there must be some relations between the architecture and the history. In another word, there must be some elements at that time led to this, for example, the monastery and the army, workshops and construction sites, and of course the intellectual and urban world of the university are all types of communities that played an important role in the development of technics. {1}Let’s follow the time order.

In The Kingdom period, the Etruscans who are good at clay status and vaults were in the power at the beginning, even so, the Romans gradually developed their own culture. In 509BC, the Romans overthrew the last Etruscan emperor and established a public. In the meanwhile, the ancient Roman architecture developed on the base of this.

Then from 509BC to 27BC, the Romans extend their domain by fighting, so there are lots of labors, resources and wealth. They used these to build roads, bridges, aqueducts. When they conquered Greece, they inherited public buildings such as theaters and bathing places. Moreover the Romans even improved what they had inherited from the Greeks. For example, there are five kinds of orders in ancient Rome: Ionic, Corinthian, Doric, Tuscan and Composite. However, the first two of them are created by the Greeks and the third one is improved on the base of Greek Doric. The forth order is created by the Romans after they were inspired by the Greeks. The last one, Composite, whose capital- as the name suggests- was a blend of two designs: the Ionic and the Corinthian. {2} [pic 5]

Finally, in The Empire period, after Octavius ended the war in 27BC, he became Emperor Augustus. He brought the whole country to a good time. In this situation, there was no more enemies. As the result, there is no need to build architectures for defense anymore as before. Aiming at showing off the power, the Romans built luxury architectures such as triumphal arches, squares and temples named after the emperors.

1. Why the Romans developed architectures?

The action that building architectures at the beginning for defense because there were enemies and building architectures for showing off after there is no more enemies can exactly prove that it is demand which determines production. For example, as we know that jalousies are used nowadays outside the windows in Rome, which is probably because of the Mediterranean sunshine. In the same way, as Rome is located at the Apennine peninsula, where volcanos erupt with earthquakes frequent, it is necessary for the Roman architecture to be secure enough to ‘survive’ from the shake. So, by contrast, the architectures inherited from ancient Egypt and ancient Greece were too weak to adapt the horrible condition. The Romans used vaults to make the space spacious, and used a kind of volcanic earth found near Vesuvius and named Pozzuolan to make the building materials, which turned the disadvantages of geography into advantages. They made breakthroughs in structural mechanic and materials science, which are the topic of this article.  

1. Material science

So, let’s get to the topic. First I want to talk about the materials science. The Romans used a variety of building materials, but the two which made this type of construction possible were brick and concrete.

1. Bricks

The bricks are an important part for an ancient architecture. And there are several shapes including square, rectangular, triangular and round. According to Doreen Yarwood, Roman bricks were thin, large and very hard. {2} They also should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, or of fine gravel, because when made of these kinds they are in the first place heavy; and, secondly, when washed by the rain as they stand in walls, they go to pieces and break up, and the straw in them does not hold together on account of the roughness of the material. They should rather be made of white and chalky or of red clay, or even of a coarse grained gravelly clay. These materials are smooth and therefore durable; they are not heavy to work with, and are readily laid. {3} [pic 6]

When it comes to laid, here is a method to build a wall. Vitruvius wrote in his book Ten Books on Architecture, ‘With these bricks there are also half-bricks. When these are used in a wall, a course of bricks is laid on one face and a course of half-bricks on the other, and they are bedded to the line on each face. The walls are bonded by alternate courses of the two different kinds, and as the bricks are always laid so as to break joints, this lends strength and a not unattractive appearance to both sides of such walls.’

1. Concrete

Then, the second building material is concrete. Actually, the Romans did not invent lime mortar but they were the first to see the full possibilities of using it to produce concrete, according to Professor Diana E. E. Kleiner from Yale. [1] And according to another book, Concrete had long been utilized as a bonding and covering material, but it was the Romans who developed it as a structural one. {2} But there is none of our business to discuss who created it. What we just need to know something about the concrete itself, after all, the topic is technology.

...