25/9/07 - Architectural History - Roman Antiquity

History and Geography of Roman Antiquity
The Roman Republic was probably founded in 753 BC. In 480 BC Rome still did not feature on the map, but by 323 BC it most certainly did. In 74 BC Rome expanded over most of the Mediterranean. It was a still a republic, but this seemed to be breaking down by this time. In 230 AD the republic structure dissipated and became an empire due to great upheavals. In 476 AD the Western empire collapsed, but the Eastern empire continued into the early Renaissance.

The Aources of the Architectural Ideas of Roman Antiquity
The Romans were not at first great innovators. Their idea came from Etruscan and Greek civilisation, and there is also some Egyptian influence in their architecture. Etruscan temples were raised on a platform, only accessible on one side. It seems that the Romans adopted this method of building temples, for example in the Roman Republic Fortuna Virilis from the second century BC. Other similar temples include the Mars Ultor (part of the Forum Augustan) begun in the first century and completed in the second century BC, and the Maison Caree and Nimes, from 1-10 AD. As the Romans became more prosperous, their architecture became more developed and distinctive.

Roman Society
The features of Roman social and political structure which influenced architectural development were:
1. By late republican times Rome was a complicated political and military bureaucracy. This created the need for large government buildings (basilicas).
2. Roman economic and political structures led to concentrations of population in towns and cities. This created a need for recreational buildings (bath houses, theatres, amphitheatres) and mass housing.
3. Roman economic structures led to a concentration of wealth which allowed large building projects to be financed.

Roman architects and builders therefore had to evolve a range building types which had not been required by the small city states of Greek antiquity. This led to significant developments in Classical architecture.

Government basilica buildings include the Basilica of Constantine, built 307-312 AD. Recreational buildings include the Arena and Theatre at Arles, Gaul (France), built in the late first century AD and the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, built between 212 and 216 AD.

Technical Innovations
Roman architects and builders were responsible for three important innovations which greatly extended the range of Classical architecture: arcuated construction, concrete and separation of structure and ornament.

Arcuated construction includes arches, vaults an domes. These allowed wide spans and large interior spaces. The Pont du Gard, at Nimes, Gaul, from the late first century BC, is an example of the wide spans that could be achieved through this innovation. The aqueduct at Segovia, Iberia (Spain) from the early first century BC is another, and is still in use for carrying Segovia's water supply. The Greeks had been aware of arcuated construction but chose not to use it, which meant that their trabeated spans and therefore interior space were limited. The Baths of Caracalla have vaulted ceilings, and this allowed for its massive interior space and high ceilings. The Baths of Diocletian, 298-305 AD, had an equally large interior based on a complex long-span vaulted structure.

The development of concrete allowed for cheap construction of complex vaulted and domed structures. The concrete was the formwork of the building, and was covered with a brick skin. The Basilica of Constantine uses concrete for economical construction.

The separation of structure and ornament was important because it allowed for the cheap construction of richly decorated interiors. The ornamentation of most Roman interiors was a thin skin of marble applied to a basic structural armature of brick and concrete. After the fall of Rome, most buildings were robbed of their marble interiors, principally at the time of the Italian Renaissance. The Basilica of Constantine and the Baths of Caracalla both had richly decorated interiors when they were first constructed.

Selected Buildings from Roman Antiquity
Temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome, second century BC; Ionic
Maison Caree, Nimes, early first century AD; Corinthian
Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, late first century BC; begun under Augustus, the first emperor, and is still his principal contribution to the architecture of Rome
The Pantheon, Rome, 118-128 AD; constructed under Hadrian, it is a unique example of a concrete vaulted structure faced in marble
The Colosseum, Rome, 75-80 AD; built under Vespasian, a comples feat of vaulted construction and internal planning with a distinctive combination of orders with arcuated construction on multi-level facade
Thermae of Caracalla, Rome, 212-21 AD; a supreme example of Roman building technology, it is compact with ingenious planning where vaulting is used to create a sequence of interior spaces of varying size and complex geometry but on a very large scale and with rich decoration in marble
Basilica of Constantine, Rome, 307-312 AD
Arch of Titus, 81 AD
Arch of Constantine, 313-315 AD.

Roman buildings tended to be influenced by the Etruscan design, which also includes pseudoperipteral temples. They added a fourth order, the Tuscan. It was derived from Etruscan temple design. It had a similar capital to the Greek Doric order, but the column was not fluted and it did have a base. Another characteristic of the Tuscan order is that the column spacing is much greater than in the three original Greek orders. This is because Etruscan temples were built of timber which was lighter and could achieve longer spans than masonry. Attempts to create Tuscan in masonry usually caused structural problems. The rustic Tuscan column was used for part of the Maison Caree in Nimes. The Mars Ultor also has Tuscan columns on its entrance facade. The Tuscan order has since been imitated in St Paul's Church in Covent Garden, built in 1631 by Inigo Jones. The horizontal structure is light because it is formed of timber faced in stone.

The Temple to Mars Ultor was a developed temple form. As Augustus's principal contribution to the city, there was a distinctly political aspect to its construction. It was built to confirm the legitimacy of the Roman empire. Since then, Classical architecture has often been used throughout history as the official style of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi right-wing and Marxist left-wing politics. We see examples of this in the Zeppelinfield of Nuremberg, built in 1936 by Speer, and the House of German Art, Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich, built 1934 by Troost.

The Pantheon in Rome was constructed under the emperor Hadrian as a temple to all of the gods. It is important because it is still on the whole intact and its design is a cylinder capped by a hemispherical dome, with an attached temple front. There is a circular oculus at the crown in the dome. The building was designed principally as an interior, which was unique to Roman architecture at the time. The interior was formed out of the necessity of structural design: the proportions are such that a sphere could be inserted into the interior and would be tangential to the floor, i.e. the base of the dome is the precise diameter of the sphere. concrete was used to build the temple, and faced with marble on its walls, except for the interior of the dome. The voids in the walls and coffers in the dome were formed to save material and to lighten the structure, to give a heightened impression of ascension. They were incorporated into the architectural scheme to create a distinctive architecture of the interior. Light shining through the oculus focuses at certain times of the day on ornaments in the wall.

The Colosseum in Rome was built by Vespasian to project his magnanimity. It required great technical ability compared with its Greek temple predecessor. It can accommodate an astonishing 50,000 spectators. The method was to build radial walls with vaults between them. There were corridors and passageways through the vaults to guide spectators into the Colosseum without the problem of crowding. It is important firstly for being multi-storey, and secondly because it has arches, neither of which had precedent in the Greek world. The trabeated structure use the Doric order on its ground floor, Ionic on the first and Corinthian on the second, a system which was applied to multi-storeyed Roman architecture thereafter, for example, the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, built in the sixteenth century. The top storey of the Colosseum incorporates a new order: a combination of Ionic and Corinthian known as Composite. It is similar to Corinthian but with much larger volutes.

So the new Roman orders were the Tuscan, Roman Doric (which has a base) and Composite (Corinthian and Ionic combined).

The Baths of Caracalla in Rome are a supreme example of Roman building technology, involving compact and ingenious planning. The building was huge and complex, and popular with the public for whom it was built. It consists of a series of lower buildings, which include libraries, gymnasia and a park, with the large bath house in the centre. It was a built as a place of huge social gathering, a place that would please the masses. The rooms in the bath house were well organised, divided into rooms of different temperatures and a collection of changing rooms. The building allowed large amounts of light into the interior, as well as allowing steam to circulate. It was ornamented by beautiful and intricate mosaics and other decorative objects, now unfortunately lost to looting. Its plan is similar in design to the Basilica of Constantine.

Triumphal arches were built as celebratory pieces of architecture. The Arch of Titus, of 81 AD, and the Arch of Constantine, completed in 315 AD, are just two examples of the triumphal arch. The Arch of Constantine is praised for its perfectly disciplined arches that conform to proportional values: one small alteration would lead to heavy repercussions for the rest of the construction. The discipline of proportions was enforced to make the resulting construction most satisfactorily pleasing on the eye. If the proportions are not adhered to, we end up with something that is aesthetically uncomfortable to look at, such as the disproportioned arches of the Nash Terraces in London, from the early nineteenth century.

Architectural Treatise
The only architectural treatise to survive from Antiquity is De Architectura, or The Ten Books on Architecture, written by a Roman architect called Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (active 46-35 BC) at the very end of the republican period. The book was dedicated to the first emperor, Augustus. It was highly influential during the Classical revival in the Italian Renaissance, both in its own right and because it served as the model for several important architectural works that were written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including those by Alberti and Palladio.

The Principal Features of Roman Architecture
To summarize, then, the principal features of Roman architecture are great buildings and cityscapes, sumptuous interiors and the triumphal arch (one of the most potent symbols in the Classical language of architecture).

Bibliography
Musgrove, J. (ed), Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture, 19th edition, Butterworths, Oxford, 1987

Ward-Perkins, J. B., Roman Imperial Architecture, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981