Prof. Amal Shah, Faculty of Design, CEPT University

HISTORY OF DESIGNA J O U R N E Y I N T O T H E H I S T O RY O F A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D I N T E R I O R D E S I G N

R o m a n A r c h i t e c t u r e

ROMAN EMPIRE IN 117 AD

The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117 CE), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 CE the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The RomanEmpire began when Augustus Caesar became the first emperor of Rome (31 BCE) and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (476 CE). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE.

The language of the romans was Latin, which was the source of roman unity and tradition. Latin was the language of the law courts in the west and of the military throughout the empire, but was not imposed officially on peoples brought under roman rule. This policy contrasts with that of Alexander the great, who aimed to impose Greek throughout his empire as the official language.

Romans who received an elite education studied Greek as a literary language, and most men of the governing classes could speak Greek. The Julio-Claudian emperors encouraged high standards of correct Latin (latinitas), a linguistic movement identified in modern terms as Classical Latin, and favored Latin for conducting official business.

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

A 5th-century papyrus showing a parallel Latin-Greek text of a speech by Cicero

Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes.

Fired clay or terracotta was also widely employed in the Roman period for architectural purposes, as structural bricks and tiles, and occasionally as architectural decoration, and for the manufacture of small statuettes and lamps.

POTTERY

Red gloss terra sigillata ware with relief decoration. Highly finished gloss pots as compared to unglossed painted pots.

Roman coins were first produced in the late 4th century BCE in Italy and continued to be minted for another eight centuries across the empire. Denominations and values more or less constantly changed but certain types such as the sestertii and denarii would persist and come to rank amongst the most famous coins in history.

COINS

A coin depicting Roman general and statesman Gnaeus PompeiusMagnus, Pompey the Great. The reverse side shows Neptune. (c. 40 BCE).

Decorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware.

DECORATIVE ART

Gold earrings with gemstones, 3rd century

Silver cup early 1st century AD

Glass cage cup from the Rhineland, latter 4th century

Cameo glass 1st century AD

Clothing in ancient Rome was adopted from Greek, it generally comprised the toga, the tunic, the stola, brooches for these, and breeches. Fabrics used are Wool, Silk and cotton, Dyeing, Hides, leather, and skins.

CLOTHING

Togas were important social representations, denoting power, occupation, and social place of upper class Roman citizens.

Tunic was sometimes worn under the toga, especially at formal occasions. The length of the garment, the presence or lack of stripes, as well as their width and ornamentation, would indicate the wearer's status in Roman society.

Stola was the traditional garment of Roman women, corresponding to the toga. After the 2nd century BC, it was considered disgraceful for a woman to wear a toga; wearing the male garment was associated with prostitution and adultery.

Breeches are an article of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles.

A brooch is a decorative jewellery item designed to be attached to garments, often to hold them closed.

Roman Architecture

Ancient Roman architecture developed different aspects of Ancient Greek architecture and newer technologies such as the arch and the dome to make a new architectural style.

Roman architecture flourished throughout the Empire during the Pax Romana. Its use of new materials, particularly concrete, was a very important feature.

Roman Architecture covers the period from the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC to about the 4th century AD, after which it becomes reclassified as Late Antique or Byzantine architecture.

Roman architectural style continued to influence building in the former empire for many centuries, and the style used in Western Europe beginning about 600AD is called Romanesque architecture to reflect this dependence on basic Roman forms.

Roman Architecture

Typology and Type of Buildings

The Ancient Romans were responsible for significant developments in housing and public hygiene, for example their public and private baths and latrines, under-floor heating in the form of the hypocaust, mica glazing, and piped hot and cold water.

They were making buildings such as Apartment blocks, Warehouses, public latrines, and amphitheaters to improve the living standards of people residing in towns and cities across the empire.

Roman ArchitectureTypology and Type of Buildings

Basilica of ConstantineRoman theatre of Aspendos, Turkey

Forum Romanum Trajan's Forum in Rome

Roman ArchitectureTypology and Type of Buildings

Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain Cistern of the Imperial Palace

Rome, obelisk in top of Spanish Stairs

The Arch of Titus

Roman Architecture

Influences and Background

Factors such as wealth and high population densities in cities forced the ancient Romans to discover new architectural solutions of their own.

The use of vaults and arches, together with a sound knowledge of building materials, enabled them to achieve unprecedented successes in the construction of imposing structures for public use.

Examples include the aqueducts of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, the basilicas and Colosseum.

These were reproduced at smaller scale in most important towns and cities in the Empire. The Ancient Romans intended that public buildings should be made to impress, as well as perform a public function. The Romans did not feel restricted by Greek aesthetic axioms (rules) alone in achieving these objectives.

The Romans absorbed Greek Architectural influence both directly by using Greek Architects and craftsmen in the early Roman Republic years.

Architecture and Design features

Elements of space making

The Roman use of the arch and their improvements in the use of concrete and bricks along with the use of features such as domes, vaults, and arches facilitated liberation of shapes from the dictates of the traditional materials of stone.

Materials

Tile covered concrete quickly supplanted marble as the primary building material, and more daring buildings soon followed, with great pillars supporting broad arches and domes rather than dense lines of columns suspending flat architraves.

The freedom of concrete also inspired the colonnade screen, a row of purely decorative columns in front of a load-bearing wall. In smaller-scale architecture, concrete's strength freed the floor plan from rectangular cells to a more free-flowing environment.

The Orders

Tuscan Order

Has been described as "the solidest and least ornate”.

Tuscan order was an older primitive Italic architectural form, predating the Greek Doric and Ionic.

In its simplicity, The Tuscan order is seen as similar to the Doric order, and yet in its overall proportions and intercolumniation, it follows the ratios of the Ionic order.

This strong order was considered most appropriate in military architecture and in docks and warehouses when they were dignified by architectural treatment.

The OrdersComposite Order

The composite order is a mixed order, combining the volutes of the Ionic order capital with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order. The composite order volutes are larger, however, and the composite order also has the moulding with egg-and-dart ornamentation between the volutes. The column of the composite order is 1:10 proportion.

Until the Renaissance, the composite was not ranked as a separate order. Instead it was considered as a late Roman form of the Corinthian order. The Arch of Titus, in the forum in Rome, built in 82 AD, is considered the first example of a composite order.

The composite order, due to its delicate appearance, was deemed by the Renaissance to be suitable for the building of churches dedicated to The Virgin Mary or other female saints.

The Roman Urban Villa

After 2nd Century BC private houses became ever more luxurious. Colonnaded gardens, inspired by Egyptian architecture, were added behind thehouse. Plinths and libraries were installed, as well as fountains, summer dining rooms and even private baths.

Windows became bigger, and walls were ornamented with illusionistic pictures. In Pompeii, some families bought out their neighbors to increase their living space and create a grand house.

The Social Structure of the Roman House

The Roman house was more than just a place to live. It played an important role in Roman societal rituals.

In the Roman world, individuals were frequently bound to others in a patron-client relationship whereby a wealthier, better educated, and more powerful patronus protected the interests of a cliens, sometimes large numbers of them. The standing of a man in Roman society often was measured by clientele size. To be seen in public accompanied by a crowd of clients was a badge of honour.

In this system, a plebeian (a member of the social class that included small farmers, merchants, and freed slaves) might be bound to a patrician; regardless of rank, all clients were obligated to support their patron in political campaigns and to perform specific services on request, and to call on and salute the patron at the patron’s home.

Wall Paintings/frescoes at Pompeii

In Roman architecture, an insula was a kind of apartment building that housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class.

The traditional elite and the very wealthy lived in a domus, a large single-family residence, but the two kinds of housing were intermingled in the city and not segregated into separate neighbourhoods.

The ground-level floor of the insula was used for taberna, shops and businesses, with the living space upstairs. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building.

Mosaics

As well as geometric patterns and designs, Roman mosaics frequently depicted divine characters or mythological scenes

MOSAIC ART

Ulysses during his journey Neptune driving his chariot

Antioch Mosaic

Architecture and Design features

Elements of space making

The mosaic is a decoration made of colourfulchips of stone inserted into cement. This tiling method took the empire by storm in the late first century and the second century.

A hypocaust was an ancient Roman system of underfloor heating, used to heat houses with hot air. The hypocaust was an invention which improved the hygiene and living conditions of citizens, and was a forerunner of modern central heating.

Architecture and Design featuresElements of space making

To a large extent, the types and styles of ancient Roman furniture followed those of their Classical and Hellenistic Greek predecessors. Because of this it is difficult to differentiate Roman forms from earlier Hellenistic ones in many cases.

Knowledge of Roman furniture is derived mainly from depictions in frescoes and representations in sculpture, along with actual pieces of furniture, fragments, and fittings, several of which were preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighboring Etruscans.

The strengths of Roman sculpture are in portraiture, where they were less concerned with the ideal than the Greeks or Ancient Egyptians, and produced very characterful works, and in narrative relief scenes.

SCULPTURE

The bronze Drunken Satyr

Bronze Hand of Constantine I The "Capitoline Brutus" 3rd or 1st century BCE

Commodus dressed as Hercules, c. 191 CE,

Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Augustus

The Capitoline Wolf is a bronze sculpture of a she-wolf suckling twin human infants, inspired by the legend of the founding of Rome

Battle of Pydna

Wedding procession of Neptune and Amphitrite, two details of the frieze of the “Altar ofDomitius Ahenobarbus,” from Rome

Census, sacrifice to Mars, and enrollment of troops, detail of the frieze of the “Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus,” from Rome

Rome

Rome

Forum of Augustus

Apart from the efforts in the old forum, Augustus decided to lay out a brand new forum (10–2 BCE), which was located to the east of the Forum of Caesar and along the city wall to the west. Since it was in a thickly settled area, houses had to be purchased and cleared away.

One entered the forum from the south side, on axis with the temple, which was placed at the far end of the forum. It seems Augustus was not able to purchase all the land he needed, even though the area behind the forum was one of the poorer sections of town. A large wall was erected behind the building, to serve both as a firewall and to shield against the squalor on the other side. To resolve the irregularity of the site,the architect added porticoes to conceal back entrances to the right and left of the temple.

The northern portico ends in a square room that contained a colossal statue of Augustus. The temple was dedicated to Mars the Avenger (Mars Ultor) in accordance with a vow made by Augustus before the Battle of Philippi (42 BCE) in which Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, were killed. There are eight Corinthian columns in front and along the flanks.

The plan is nearly square, measuring 38 by 40 meters. Omitting two rows of columns created space for a generous entrance. Inside the temple, in the apse, elevated five steps above the floor, were statues of Mars, Venus, and the deified Julius Caesar. Forming a cross-axis are two large semi-circular recess or plinths. Their purpose was to hold statues that tell the narrative of Romulus and Aeneas, the great men of Rome’s founding. The Augustan Empire was depicted as the culmination of this history, with Augustus himself presiding over this portrait gallery in the form of a bronze statue on a pedestal in the middle of the forum.

Apart from the religious ceremonies that took place here, the forum became the starting point for magistrates departing for the provinces and the repository of the triumphal banners. It was also the place for senate meetings when reports of military successes were expected.

Rome

ColosseumColosseum has been one of Rome’s landmarks since the day it was dedicated. Vespasian’s decision to build the Flavian Amphitheatre, as it was known at the time, was very shrewd. The site chosen was the artificial lake on the grounds of Nero’s Palace, which wasdrained for the purpose. Vespasian reclaimed for the public the land Nero had confiscated for his private pleasure and provided the masses with the largest arena for gladiatorial combats and other lavish spectacles that had ever been constructed.

The Colosseum takes its name, however, not from its size—it could hold more than 50,000 spectators.

Romans flocked to amphitheatres all over the Empire to seetwo main kinds of spectacles: gladiatorial combats and animalhunts.

Gladiators were professional fighters, usually slaves whohad been purchased to train in gladiatorial schools as Hand-to-hand combatants. Their owners, seeking to turn a profit, rented them out for performances. Beginning with Domitian, however, all gladiators who competed in the Colosseum were state-owned to ensure that they could not be used as a private army to overthrow the government.

Although every gladiator faced death every time he entered the arena, some had long careers and achieved considerable fame. Others, for example, criminals or captured enemies, were sent into the amphitheatre without any training and without defensive weapons. Those “games” were a form of capital punishment coupled with entertainment for the masses.

THE COLOSSEUMThe Colosseum was the largest and most important amphitheatrein the world, and the kinds of spectacles staged there were costlier and more impressive than those held anywhere else.

There are even accounts of the Colosseumbeing flooded so that naval battles could be staged before anaudience of tens of thousands, although some scholars havedoubted that the arena could be made watertight or thatships could manoeuvre in the space available.

Forum of Trajan

Forum of Trajan, Rome, 112AD. Restored view

1) Temple of Trajan, 2) Column of Trajan,3) library, 4) Basilica Ulpia, 5) forum,6) equestrian statue of Trajan.

Rome

Pantheon

Rome’s temple to all gods.

Work began on the third Pantheon soon after Hadrian became emperor and was probably completed by 125.

Hadrian nonetheless declined to affix his own name to the building, preferring to honour Agrippa by retaining the temple’s original dedication on the facade M.AGRIPPA. L.F.COS.TERTIVM.FECIT (Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius,consul for the third time, built it).

The Pantheon is not only one of the best-preserved buildings of antiquity but also one of the most influential designs in architectural history. It reveals the full potential of concrete, both as a building material and as a means for shaping architectural space.

Below the dome, much of the original marble veneer of the walls, niches, and floor has survived Visitors to the Pantheon can get a sense, as almost nowhere else, of how magnificent the interiors of Roman concrete buildings could be.

But despite the luxurious skin of the Pantheon’s interior, the sense experienced on first entering the structure is not the weight of the enclosing walls but the space they enclose. Roman architects were the first to conceive of architecture in terms of units of space that 12-20 Dome of the Pantheon,

The Pantheon’s interior is a single unified, self-sufficient whole, uninterrupted by supportingsolids.

It encloses visitors without imprisoning them, opening through the oculus to the drifting clouds, the blue sky, the sun, and the gods. In this space, the architect used light not merely to illuminate the darkness but to create drama and underscore the interior shape’s symbolism.

On a sunny day, the light that passes through the oculus forms a circular beam, a disk of light that moves across the coffered dome in the course of the day as the sun moves across the sky itself escaping from the noise and torrid heat of a Roman summer day into the Pantheon’s cool, calm, and mystical immensity is an experience almost impossible to describe verbally.

Extremely hard and durable basalt was employed in the mix for the foundations. The recipe was gradually modified until, at the top of the dome, featherweight pumice replaced stones tolighten the load. The dome’s thickness also decreases as itnears the 30-foot-diameter oculus, the only light source for the interior.

The dome’s weight waslessened, without weakening its structure, through the use of coffers, which had been employed long before. The coffers further reduced the dome’s mass and provided a handsome pattern of squares within the vast circle.

Renaissance drawings suggest that each cofferonce had a glistening gilded-bronze rosette at its centre, enhancing the dome’s symbolism as the starry heavens.

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period (starting in 27 BC). The emperors used a variety of different titles throughout history. Often when a given Roman is described as becoming "emperor" in English, it reflects his taking of the title Augustus or Caesar. Another title often used was imperator, originally a military honorific. Early Emperors also used the title princeps. Emperors frequently amassed Republican titles, notably princeps Senatus, consul and Pontifex Maximus.

• Augustus • Tiberius• Caligula • Claudius • Nero • Galba • Vespasian • Titus • Domitian • Nerva• Trajan • Hadrian • Marcus Aurelius • Commodus• Diocletian • Maximian• Constantine the Great • Valens • Theodosius the Great• Romulus Augustulus