Introduction to Vitruvius and *De Architectura*

we begin this course of lectures and readings on the texts and theories of western architecture by studying the book known as vitruvius more correctly termed de architectura vitruvius was the author the book is in ten volumes and is often referred to as the ten books on architecture it is a treatise on architecture that was composed towards the end of the first century bce in the period of roman antiquity it's the earliest work of architectural theory in western in the western architectural tradition it was written obviously in latin and the version that we will be using for readings is a translation by maurice hickey morgan available to be read online in the course resource list under vitruvius i should say that it's also available on kindle from amazon for less than a pound and there is a paperback edition also available from amazon for less than 10 pounds so you might consider buying one of those vitruvius is the only work of architectural theory to have survived from either greek or roman antiquity we know that there were others because they are referred to in other writings and even in vitruvius itself but none of these others has survived it was largely it seems a matter of luck that vitruvius itself survived a copy of the manuscript was discovered in the library of saint gallon abbey in switzerland in 1414 and our knowledge of petruvius comes entirely from this it contained no illustrations so none of the illustrations in subsequent editions is original but for the existence of vitruvius our knowledge of the buildings of antiquity would be purely archaeological based on the buildings themselves petruvius is the only source that gives us clues as to the intentions of the architects of antiquity that period that was so crucial in the development of western architecture the books have been described as a manual of building they deal with all aspects of building design including the effects of climate and geography on the siting and orientation of buildings the selection of and use of building materials plan forms and general arrangements for different building types the ornamentation of buildings including descriptions of the classical orders and the symbolic significance of aesthetic considerations such as room and element proportions the author whose full name was marcus vitruvius polio and who lived we think from 80 bce until 15 bce he is a somewhat shadowy figure about whom little is known he was a military engineer who was involved in caesar's gaelic war and of course caesar's account of that is well known and his speciality seems to have been the operation of ballista roman equivalent of artillery he would also have been involved with military fortifications and he's known to have been involved in the construction of government buildings including at least one basilica the basilica at uh whanau but none of the buildings with which he was involved including this one has survived so the drawing here is a conjecture based on the verbal description of the building in in vitruvius's text it's worth noting that the term architect in roman times involved a much larger range of work than all that of the present-day architect it included civil engineering and infrastructures projects as well as buildings the trivia certainly demonstrated knowledge of the craft of building such as in the descriptions of building techniques for simple building types such as houses in book six and of stucco vaulting in book seven and in his descriptions of the properties of various building materials there are no descriptions in vitruvius of complex building forms such as volts cross vaults or domes and it has to be remembered that these occurred in later roman architecture vitruvius's treatment of complex theoretical aspects of architecture is less certain than that of building construction his explanation of harmonics for example in chapter 4 of book 5 is unclear and he makes no mention of why it is included he makes no reference to it when he deals with the proportioning of rooms in chapter three of book six and as we'll see in the lecture on palladio which will be in two weeks from now there was in classical architecture a direct correlation between harmonics and the proportions of rooms so it seems odd that this was not dealt with in vitruvius's treatise well it's perhaps for this reason that vitruvius has been slightly patronized by historians as someone who was not able to discuss authoritatively the most difficult theoretical matters on the positive side and this may be due to as having been a plain speaking builder the book is very clearly written using simple language that is easy to understand unlike much subsequent architectural theory especially that of the modern period it should be remembered that the book appeared around 20 bce and coincided exactly with rome's transition from a republic governed by a legitimate legislative assembly to an empire that was hierarchically structured with an emperor at its head and the work is dedicated to the first emperor augustus to whom it is personally addressed at various stages throughout the text and this illustration depicts vitruvius explaining his treatise to augustus the the first emperor also worth noting is that very little of the architecture of the roman republic actually survives this is uh the the temple of fortuna virules in rome from the second century bce uh a very rare survival of uh architecture from the roman republican period the architecture that we think of as the architecture of roman antiquity such as the coliseum in rome or the pantheon in rome these buildings were all from the imperial period but it has to be said and i will be demonstrating this in later in this lecture in describing one of these imperial buildings that the systems which were used for their design and construction where the system that was described in vitruvius's book so vitruvius did capture in his 10 books the the whole way in which the roman architects went about designing buildings also worth considering before we go and look at the book itself is that it was so terribly influential the great treatises of the italian renaissance such as alberti top here and the quattro libri of palladio were based on it and it has continued to fascinate scholars ever since it was greatly re-examined in the neoclassical period in the 18th century and continues to attract scholarship in the present day as is evidenced by the range of books in the library resource list for this course so vitruvius's work has has stood the test of time and perhaps the reason for this is that it gives such a straightforward account of the art and craft of building and that it is so comprehensive and as i said as we'll see later in this lecture it deals with every aspect of the design problems that were faced by the architects of the pre-modern period so what does it consist of well we see here a brief description um of our brief account all the ten books uh it deals with tank planning um not necessarily the the subjects are not necessarily presented in what we would think of as a logical order because also in book one in addition to time planning it deals with things like the qualifications and the education of the architect there's a book on building materials on temples on public buildings domestic buildings decorative work ornamentation it covers the full uh it covers the full range so um if we are asking ourselves why read an ancient text such as vitruvius an obvious answer is that as people who are interested in architectural history it will help us to better understand the buildings of antiquity and therefore of the whole tradition of classical building that is of course one of the most important strands of western architecture but there is a deeper reason which is connected to the developing of an understanding of the past and of its successes and failures in order that mistakes are not repeated and also that do we we do not waste our time reinventing the wheel something that must always be remembered when we look at history is that we will be looking at it through 21st century eyes with all of the preconceptions and prejudices that that implies and one of the values of reading a text that was written over 2000 years ago is that it can enable us to identify and examine our own prejudices an aspect of the book that is particularly relevant to the situation that we find ourselves in the present day is vitruvius's complete acceptance of the realities of the natural world in its widest sense the effects of local geography on life in general and on any building project this manifests itself in many ways throughout the book for example in the sections that deal with the selection of the sighting and orientation of buildings so that they are accommodated to their surroundings he doesn't advocate that a building should become an alien object in its surroundings trying to dominate its surroundings as of course occurred in so much of modern architecture he devotes quite a lot of space to water sources and available availability a recognition of the dependence of societies on natural resources and also to the availability of materials in general and the implications of specifying materials that are not available locally thus recognizing the difficulties of transporting materials over long distances he advocates taking local climate into account when determining the forms of a building and he does not suggest that a particular building form should be imposed across the whole empire these maps show the extent of the influence of rome um the top map here dates from 74 bce this is about 50 years before vitruvius or before vitruvius's treatise and we have to remember that the gallic wars which occurred after this and in which vitruvius participated did extend the boundary of the empire into most of france and germany and also into the british isles so this is the sort of area um that was covered by rome in the vitruvian period and um this map here uh dating from 230 ce gives the um the more or less the greatest extent of the roman empire so the kinds of um places for which um vitruvius was explaining building forms ranged from the aridity of north africa to the cold and wet climates of northern europe and he did not suggest that a single building type would be suitable for this he he advocated that the building forms should be adapted to the climate so he advocates taking local climate into account when determining the forms of a building and we have to remember that he was dealing with this quite large um area so he recognized the sense of not imposing a particular building type across the entire region and bear in mind he was addressing the emperor and he was dealing with buildings for the entire roman world so he advocated the sensible and non-wasteful use of scarce resources and these are all questions that would assume less importance in the architecture of the modern period in which architects have often been congratulated for excess and the pro profligate use of resources rather than rather than for their responsible use and in the modern period in particular architects have sought to impose particular building forms across the entire world often in complete denial of local conditions the flat roof building so beloved of modernists for example is completely unsuitable for temperate climates and was adopted in modern architecture for ideological reasons that were unconnected to the realities of climate the modernist project was of course made possible by the availability of cheap hydrocarbon fuel that facilitated the transport of materials across the world and the use of built forms that were not adapted to local climate and that consumed large quantities of energy for heating and cooling in addition they were frequently not durable and deteriorated quickly leading to expensive maintenance and most modern buildings it has to be said and did not even function particularly well for their intended purposes well these were luxuries that could not be afforded when vitruvius was writing the romans did not have the luxury of seemingly unlimited quantities of material or cheap energy that in turn made every variety of material available to them they were aware that the transport of materials would be difficult and that buildings would have to be well adapted to location and climate and geography so the general tone of vitruvius's text is concerned with accommodating to nature rather than imposing on it or even attempting to dominate it so in our age of climate emergency perhaps yet another interpretation of vitruvius will actually be helpful so what does the book consist of now these are the sections of the book that i'd like you to have a look at before we meet to discuss them and um i've chosen from the entire um range of um of subjects that are dealt with in the book i don't suggest that you should dwell on every word of um of this i um i think that you should uh speed read you should glance through the book and just try and take a flavor of its um of its contents so um what are the really important parts well let me draw attention your attention to book one chapter three paragraph two in which vitruvius mentions the requirements of a building which are firmness commodity and delight this is one of the most commonly coated parts of vitruvius's treatise and of course in the original latin these are referred to as firmitas utilitas and venustas firmness commodity and delight and this particular english translation is due to henry wooten who produced an english version of vitruvius in the 16th century um firmness that a building should be structurally sound commodity that it should be fit for its purpose delight that it should be satisfactory aesthetically so have a look at that and incidentally in this um version of vitruvius that we're that we're looking at the translation by morgan he doesn't actually use these terms but these are the these are the familiar terms firmness commodity and delight have a look at book two which deals with the building materials and just to see how he describes things like the builder's use of sand then in book three another very important topic is that of symmetry symmetria and vitruvius's meaning of that term is not a geometric symmetry that there should be an axis of symmetry in a building although in all roman buildings there was um what he means by symmetry is that the um that parts of buildings should be well proportioned in themselves but more than that that they should be related to all the other parts of the building in an harmonious way and he advocates a modular system and the basing of that modular system on the proportions which are found in the human body hence the illustration of the vitruvian man set in the square and the circle and of course that drawing is from an addition of vitruvius which appeared in the italian renaissance but this is a very important part of the book so let me draw your attention to that then in book four vitruvius describes the orders of the classical language so you should have a look at that and in subsequent editions in the edition by palladio for example that we will look at in two weeks time the text is accompanied by beautiful drawings of the orders which were sources for the architects of the italian renaissance and also for all subsequent um classical architects so that's an important um part of the book and then in book five chapter four of book five he deals with harmonics with ideas of musical harmony and this is important for a number of reasons you will find that the explanation and this is the only part of the book in which the explanation is shall we say rather impenetrable it's not well explained and so don't dwell on it just have a look through it but it kind of suggests that vitruvius did not fully understand it so why did he include it well that seems to have been because it was actively used by the architects of roman antiquity so he felt that he couldn't leave it out it suggests that it was in common use in roman times and it would become very important in the italian renaissance as we'll see in the lecture on palladio in two weeks time now although um the understanding of harmonics from the truist treatment of it seems very confused in fact the general principles are really quite simple and i will be taking you through these in the lecture on palladio so don't get um hung up on this uh at this stage because um the explanation of of harmonics and of how it is applied in building um is relatively straightforward so we'll see about that in uh in two weeks time uh the book also deals with uh in book six uh climate proportions of rooms exposure of rooms so have a look at those um let me draw your attention in book seven chapter three to his explanation of stucco work because i think that gives a good demonstration of uh vitruvius's knowledge of building instruction he didn't know what he was talking about when it came to how buildings were put together and then in book 8 i'm drawing your attention to chapter 2 on rainwater which is just one part of bouquet but it does indicate his treatment of that indicates the extent to which the roman architects had to be concerned with the sighting of buildings with the resources that were available to two buildings so a quick glance through the book then don't dwell on every word but um do just um have a look through it and um and just try to take the general flavor of it and we will have a discussion about it obviously in the um in the tutorial later in the week well i'm going to conclude this lecture by looking at um one of the major buildings of roman antiquity the baths of caracalla in rome which was one of the largest and most complex building projects ever carried out in roman antiquity and indeed in any age of architecture it presents it presented formidable problems of structure spatial organization as well as the management of resources and although it dates from the third century ce around well more than 200 years after the truvias treatise was written it nevertheless demonstrates the application of many of the ideas that vitruvius discusses the resources issues that confronted the designers and builders of the bath of caracalla have been well described in a paper on the building by the archaeologist janet de lane which is in fact concerned principally with the management of construction resources so i've i've given the reference to that paper if you're interested uh in the text for the lecture which will be available on learn and also at the end of the of the powerpoint presentation uh which is also will also be up on learn and i should say that delane's paper is referred to in a new book published this year by barnabas calder called architecture from prehistory to climate emergency and um this gives an interesting account of this building the building uh the the bath of um caracalla so let me draw attention your attention to that as well and again the references will be in the lecture text well the building was a bath house which in roman times was a center not just for bathing but for social activity and interactions of all kinds and the primary requirement was for a series of covered spaces with controlled environments ranging from hot through tipid to cold unheated to ambient temperature many of them provided with plunge pools a major uncovered swimming pool and two uncovered exercise regards were also provided so let's just have a look at what the building consisted of now it's a very large building depicted here the entrance is on this side so one came in on this side and this is the uncovered swimming pool there's a very large interior space which is the frigidairium the cold room and then one passed through the teppaderium to the hot rooms which were on the other side of the building and looking at the building from the other side these are the hot rooms facing south getting the um the hot roman sun and provided with generous windows to allow the sunlight to um to flood in the um this is the entrance uh side of the building with the open air swimming pool so one came in here and the frigidairium beyond and the calderium beyond that and in the section here here is the open air swimming pool and then into the frigidaire which is the largest space in the building and here is the frigidairium the largest space in the building and um a conjectured illustration of what how the building will have been used we're looking here from the frigidaire through into the um into the swimming pool and this by the way is this depiction is not of the bath of caracalla it actually depicts the bars of diocletian which was a very similar building but note the juxtaposition of smallish and very large volumes plunge pools in the bases of these smaller spaces and here we are a depiction by alma the dema at the end of the 19th century of what went on in this in this building so the building was a bath house which was a center not just for bathing but for all kinds of social activity and let's look firstly in thinking of the problems that the architect of this building had to solve at its sighting and orientation its physician close to higher ground so that and this was to facilitate water flow through it so water was introduced from an aqueduct into cisterns and then flowed by gravity into the hot end of the building where the furnaces under the floors heated the water to create the the hot room the calderium the water then flowed through into the into the colder parts of the building eventually ending up in the swimming pool and then downwards again into a drain so the site of the building was carefully selected so as to allow its functioner to allow the the water flow through it which was a very important part obviously of its function then it was not just randomly oriented the hot rooms were on the south side to the hottest part of the building um to to take the um the advantage of the afternoon sun the building is remarkable for the way in which the structural requirements that had to be met to create a series of large enclosures in various types of masonry were integrated with the space planning of the building to create a sequence of visually exciting interconnected interiors and to the attention that was paid to the careful management of resources now to build a large enclosure in roman times they had to use masonry and that meant that they had to use a vaulted form of construction in order to achieve long spans to create large interiors the development of the roman vault is interesting a vault exerts side thrust on whatever supports it and this tends to cause the walls of a large interior if it's roofing a large interior to be pushed over so the walls have to be thick in order to be stable in order that they don't get pushed over by the vault but the romans very quickly realized that although the vault the walls had to be thick they didn't have to be solid so a voided kind of support wall was developed and this of course produced a huge saving in material a development of that was the cross vault which again was supported on voided walls but which had crossballs which afforded flat areas of um wall above the um or at the vault level which meant that windows could be located there which would admit light into what would otherwise be a rather dark interior so the form of the main spaces in the building of the bats of karakala this form the cross-vaulted um form uh supported on voided walls was determined entirely from the from the practical problems associated with the construction of the vault then looking at the sequence of construction the way in which they built the building was to have a thin skin of brick which was a relatively expensive material and make the bulk of the vault from stone rubble which was locally available sourced locally um so this was an economical way of constructing the building and then to finish it they clad this structural amateur in multi-colored marble to produce a sumptuous architecture of the interior in which the um the spaces and the volumes which were originated out of necessity out of structural necessity were used to create an interesting sequence of architectural spaces a very interesting architecture of the interior now this is the way of making a building that is described in vitruvius that you don't start with some sort of preconceived idea of what the form should be the form is generated out of what you have to do in order to create the spaces in an economic way and then the architecture emerges from from that so virtually every form of the structural artery of the base of caracalla and of the building were determined from structural considerations and the considerations of how they would be constructed and this was an enormous building as these um remains show so what we are seeing here this is the main space the frigidaire these are the voided walls that supported the vault now gone and of course all the marvel um was stripped from the building in the italian renaissance and incorporated into the various classical buildings of the italian renaissance so the building was it didn't fall down it didn't fall to pieces it was um it was dismantled uh for its and used as a quarry for building materials for subsequent um for subsequent architecture this slide shows how the building may have looked uh when it was in use uh and contrasting it with um how it looks in the present day well the building is remarkable um for the way in which the resources required to build it were managed and the use of voltage problems of construction meant that the amount of material that was required to cover the total area of the building was relatively modest and this was a primary factor in minimizing the energy that was required for its construction the embodied energy in the terminology of the present day the manner in which and here is um an earlier an aerial photograph of um of the building in the present day but the manage the manner in which the embodied energy was distributed is of considerable interest as a demonstration of the careful way in which this was um carried out by the designers of the building and it reflects the variation in the v the availability of the various types of energy that was available to the builders three types of energy in particular were crucial human energy directly related to the number of laborers involved in constructing the building heat energy the energy required for making some of the building materials and the most important of these were bricks and lime which required furnace temperatures of around 1000 degrees centigrade this consumed large quantities of the only fuel available which was charcoal available timber resources for making charcoal were therefore a consideration especially as timber was used as fuel for other purposes and transport energy the energy required to transport the materials to the site and and this was minimized by sourcing materials uh locally so the form adopted for the building was heavily influenced by the availability and therefore cost of these three components of embodied energy the use of the vaulted form for the principal structural elements involved geometric complexity and that in turn required considerable input of labor this form of energy was readily available in rome at the time and it should be noted that the people who built this building were not slaves they were salaried um laborers who were paid for their work but this form of energy human energy if you like was readily available in rome at the time the ultimate source of course was food and this was also readily available in the form of grain from egypt climate was an important factor climate historians tell us that between 600 bce and 300 ce the climate of egypt was particularly favorable for the growth of grain and egypt was in fact the bread basket of the roman empire that allowed the growth of large urban centres of which rome itself was the largest and this period ended with climate change that occurred naturally in the 3rd century ce the climate became colder and less predictable and it had been argued that this was primarily responsible for the fall of the roman empire a fascinating topic that we cannot go into here a secondary benefit of the adoption of a labour-intensive method of construction for the mass of karakala was the provision of employment for the urban poor of rome and this was of course always a concern for emperors who had to avoid social unrest as a potential threat to their power the two other required energy and boots for transport and heat were in much shorter supply than labor energy and the form of the building was organized to minimize the requirements for these the energy source for transport was of course forage for draft animals such as oxen the availability of this resource which is obviously related to climate and geography will have been well understood and of immediate concern to the planets of the building rome was essentially an agrarian economy the bulk of the material for the building was sourced locally from within 20 miles of rome to minimize transport cost to minimize the heat energy required the quantities of lime and bricks in the fabric of the building were kept as small as possible lime accounted for only 3.2 percent of the volume and bricks 2.7 percent of the volume 76 76 of the bulk of the building consisted of stone rubble that consumed no heat energy and it was sourced locally one serious extravagance so far as materials were concerned was the use of marble for ornamentation but by confining this to a thin veneer applied to the surfaces of the structural armature the requirement for this was minimized and marble accounted for only 0.5 percent of the bulk of the building so the architects who designed this building were concerned that it satisfied all the requirements it provided a set of well-serviced spaces that worked well for their intended purpose it produced a major public monument that enhanced the standing of the emperor and it represented a careful use of available resources it was also produced from resources that were renewable from the viewpoint of our own time it offers an example of how a monumental building of architectural quality with highly complex programmatic functions can be created from materials and energy sources that are renewable if in the present day we're looking for an example of how to create a major building from resources that are a low carbon footprint and renewable this is it this is how to do it and it encapsulated all of the victruvian qualities it has firmness the building was sensibly configured structurally it has commodity it satisfied multiple functional requirements well and delight it provided sequences of well-proportioned spaces and volumes ornamentated in marvel that were highly satisfying aesthetically now the building in the present day is a ruin but we should not think that this was because it was not durable it was because it was dismantled in the italian renaissance this building the baths of diocletian a very similar building to the base of caracalla has survived in the present day and because it was not dismantled at the time of the italian nationals it was converted into a church the basilica of santa maria del angeli which is one of the grandest buildings in present-day rome so this demonstrates that this building which was built sensibly with renewable materials was in fact highly durable this is a sustainable form of architecture so we can learn a lot from vitruvius he wrote a treatise that was concerned with how to build buildings while at the same time paying due respect to the wider environment by using resources in sensible ways having regard to local conditions of climate and geography he recognized that architecture should not be mere building and should have symbolic meaning an important aspect of this was the proportioning of all parts of buildings particularly individual rooms and also the achievement of meaningful relationships between different parts of buildings through the use of modular systems what he called symmetry symmetry the work therefore vitruvius's book has something that architects in the 21st century can learn from it has a timeless quality which is surely the sign of a great work and this was recognized by the many scholars who have worked on it over the centuries and produced new versions of it it is a work with which all historians of architecture need to be familiar well we'll discuss it in the tutorial and i'll look forward to doing that with you later in the week

we begin this course of lectures and readings on the texts and theories of western architecture by studying the book known as vitruvius more correctly termed de architectura vitruvius was the author the book is in ten volumes and is often referred to as the ten books on architecture it is a treatise on architecture that was composed towards the end of the first century bce in the period of roman antiquity it&#39;s the earliest work of architectural theory in western in the western architectural tradition it was written obviously in latin and the version that we will be using for readings is a translation by maurice hickey morgan available to be read online in the course resource list under vitruvius i should say that it&#39;s also available on kindle from amazon for less than a pound and there is a paperback edition also available from amazon for less than 10 pounds so you might consider buying one of those vitruvius is the only work of architectural theory to have survived from either greek or roman antiquity we know that there were others because they are referred to in other writings and even in vitruvius itself but none of these others has survived it was largely it seems a matter of luck that vitruvius itself survived a copy of the manuscript was discovered in the library of saint gallon abbey in switzerland in 1414 and our knowledge of petruvius comes entirely from this it contained no illustrations so none of the illustrations in subsequent editions is original but for the existence of vitruvius our knowledge of the buildings of antiquity would be purely archaeological based on the buildings themselves petruvius is the only source that gives us clues as to the intentions of the architects of antiquity that period that was so crucial in the development of western architecture the books have been described as a manual of building they deal with all aspects of building design including the effects of climate and geography on the siting and orientation of buildings the selection of and use of building materials plan forms and general arrangements for different building types the ornamentation of buildings including descriptions of the classical orders and the symbolic significance of aesthetic considerations such as room and element proportions the author whose full name was marcus vitruvius polio and who lived we think from 80 bce until 15 bce he is a somewhat shadowy figure about whom little is known he was a military engineer who was involved in caesar&#39;s gaelic war and of course caesar&#39;s account of that is well known and his speciality seems to have been the operation of ballista roman equivalent of artillery he would also have been involved with military fortifications and he&#39;s known to have been involved in the construction of government buildings including at least one basilica the basilica at uh whanau but none of the buildings with which he was involved including this one has survived so the drawing here is a conjecture based on the verbal description of the building in in vitruvius&#39;s text it&#39;s worth noting that the term architect in roman times involved a much larger range of work than all that of the present-day architect it included civil engineering and infrastructures projects as well as buildings the trivia certainly demonstrated knowledge of the craft of building such as in the descriptions of building techniques for simple building types such as houses in book six and of stucco vaulting in book seven and in his descriptions of the properties of various building materials there are no descriptions in vitruvius of complex building forms such as volts cross vaults or domes and it has to be remembered that these occurred in later roman architecture vitruvius&#39;s treatment of complex theoretical aspects of architecture is less certain than that of building construction his explanation of harmonics for example in chapter 4 of book 5 is unclear and he makes no mention of why it is included he makes no reference to it when he deals with the proportioning of rooms in chapter three of book six and as we&#39;ll see in the lecture on palladio which will be in two weeks from now there was in classical architecture a direct correlation between harmonics and the proportions of rooms so it seems odd that this was not dealt with in vitruvius&#39;s treatise well it&#39;s perhaps for this reason that vitruvius has been slightly patronized by historians as someone who was not able to discuss authoritatively the most difficult theoretical matters on the positive side and this may be due to as having been a plain speaking builder the book is very clearly written using simple language that is easy to understand unlike much subsequent architectural theory especially that of the modern period it should be remembered that the book appeared around 20 bce and coincided exactly with rome&#39;s transition from a republic governed by a legitimate legislative assembly to an empire that was hierarchically structured with an emperor at its head and the work is dedicated to the first emperor augustus to whom it is personally addressed at various stages throughout the text and this illustration depicts vitruvius explaining his treatise to augustus the the first emperor also worth noting is that very little of the architecture of the roman republic actually survives this is uh the the temple of fortuna virules in rome from the second century bce uh a very rare survival of uh architecture from the roman republican period the architecture that we think of as the architecture of roman antiquity such as the coliseum in rome or the pantheon in rome these buildings were all from the imperial period but it has to be said and i will be demonstrating this in later in this lecture in describing one of these imperial buildings that the systems which were used for their design and construction where the system that was described in vitruvius&#39;s book so vitruvius did capture in his 10 books the the whole way in which the roman architects went about designing buildings also worth considering before we go and look at the book itself is that it was so terribly influential the great treatises of the italian renaissance such as alberti top here and the quattro libri of palladio were based on it and it has continued to fascinate scholars ever since it was greatly re-examined in the neoclassical period in the 18th century and continues to attract scholarship in the present day as is evidenced by the range of books in the library resource list for this course so vitruvius&#39;s work has has stood the test of time and perhaps the reason for this is that it gives such a straightforward account of the art and craft of building and that it is so comprehensive and as i said as we&#39;ll see later in this lecture it deals with every aspect of the design problems that were faced by the architects of the pre-modern period so what does it consist of well we see here a brief description um of our brief account all the ten books uh it deals with tank planning um not necessarily the the subjects are not necessarily presented in what we would think of as a logical order because also in book one in addition to time planning it deals with things like the qualifications and the education of the architect there&#39;s a book on building materials on temples on public buildings domestic buildings decorative work ornamentation it covers the full uh it covers the full range so um if we are asking ourselves why read an ancient text such as vitruvius an obvious answer is that as people who are interested in architectural history it will help us to better understand the buildings of antiquity and therefore of the whole tradition of classical building that is of course one of the most important strands of western architecture but there is a deeper reason which is connected to the developing of an understanding of the past and of its successes and failures in order that mistakes are not repeated and also that do we we do not waste our time reinventing the wheel something that must always be remembered when we look at history is that we will be looking at it through 21st century eyes with all of the preconceptions and prejudices that that implies and one of the values of reading a text that was written over 2000 years ago is that it can enable us to identify and examine our own prejudices an aspect of the book that is particularly relevant to the situation that we find ourselves in the present day is vitruvius&#39;s complete acceptance of the realities of the natural world in its widest sense the effects of local geography on life in general and on any building project this manifests itself in many ways throughout the book for example in the sections that deal with the selection of the sighting and orientation of buildings so that they are accommodated to their surroundings he doesn&#39;t advocate that a building should become an alien object in its surroundings trying to dominate its surroundings as of course occurred in so much of modern architecture he devotes quite a lot of space to water sources and available availability a recognition of the dependence of societies on natural resources and also to the availability of materials in general and the implications of specifying materials that are not available locally thus recognizing the difficulties of transporting materials over long distances he advocates taking local climate into account when determining the forms of a building and he does not suggest that a particular building form should be imposed across the whole empire these maps show the extent of the influence of rome um the top map here dates from 74 bce this is about 50 years before vitruvius or before vitruvius&#39;s treatise and we have to remember that the gallic wars which occurred after this and in which vitruvius participated did extend the boundary of the empire into most of france and germany and also into the british isles so this is the sort of area um that was covered by rome in the vitruvian period and um this map here uh dating from 230 ce gives the um the more or less the greatest extent of the roman empire so the kinds of um places for which um vitruvius was explaining building forms ranged from the aridity of north africa to the cold and wet climates of northern europe and he did not suggest that a single building type would be suitable for this he he advocated that the building forms should be adapted to the climate so he advocates taking local climate into account when determining the forms of a building and we have to remember that he was dealing with this quite large um area so he recognized the sense of not imposing a particular building type across the entire region and bear in mind he was addressing the emperor and he was dealing with buildings for the entire roman world so he advocated the sensible and non-wasteful use of scarce resources and these are all questions that would assume less importance in the architecture of the modern period in which architects have often been congratulated for excess and the pro profligate use of resources rather than rather than for their responsible use and in the modern period in particular architects have sought to impose particular building forms across the entire world often in complete denial of local conditions the flat roof building so beloved of modernists for example is completely unsuitable for temperate climates and was adopted in modern architecture for ideological reasons that were unconnected to the realities of climate the modernist project was of course made possible by the availability of cheap hydrocarbon fuel that facilitated the transport of materials across the world and the use of built forms that were not adapted to local climate and that consumed large quantities of energy for heating and cooling in addition they were frequently not durable and deteriorated quickly leading to expensive maintenance and most modern buildings it has to be said and did not even function particularly well for their intended purposes well these were luxuries that could not be afforded when vitruvius was writing the romans did not have the luxury of seemingly unlimited quantities of material or cheap energy that in turn made every variety of material available to them they were aware that the transport of materials would be difficult and that buildings would have to be well adapted to location and climate and geography so the general tone of vitruvius&#39;s text is concerned with accommodating to nature rather than imposing on it or even attempting to dominate it so in our age of climate emergency perhaps yet another interpretation of vitruvius will actually be helpful so what does the book consist of now these are the sections of the book that i&#39;d like you to have a look at before we meet to discuss them and um i&#39;ve chosen from the entire um range of um of subjects that are dealt with in the book i don&#39;t suggest that you should dwell on every word of um of this i um i think that you should uh speed read you should glance through the book and just try and take a flavor of its um of its contents so um what are the really important parts well let me draw attention your attention to book one chapter three paragraph two in which vitruvius mentions the requirements of a building which are firmness commodity and delight this is one of the most commonly coated parts of vitruvius&#39;s treatise and of course in the original latin these are referred to as firmitas utilitas and venustas firmness commodity and delight and this particular english translation is due to henry wooten who produced an english version of vitruvius in the 16th century um firmness that a building should be structurally sound commodity that it should be fit for its purpose delight that it should be satisfactory aesthetically so have a look at that and incidentally in this um version of vitruvius that we&#39;re that we&#39;re looking at the translation by morgan he doesn&#39;t actually use these terms but these are the these are the familiar terms firmness commodity and delight have a look at book two which deals with the building materials and just to see how he describes things like the builder&#39;s use of sand then in book three another very important topic is that of symmetry symmetria and vitruvius&#39;s meaning of that term is not a geometric symmetry that there should be an axis of symmetry in a building although in all roman buildings there was um what he means by symmetry is that the um that parts of buildings should be well proportioned in themselves but more than that that they should be related to all the other parts of the building in an harmonious way and he advocates a modular system and the basing of that modular system on the proportions which are found in the human body hence the illustration of the vitruvian man set in the square and the circle and of course that drawing is from an addition of vitruvius which appeared in the italian renaissance but this is a very important part of the book so let me draw your attention to that then in book four vitruvius describes the orders of the classical language so you should have a look at that and in subsequent editions in the edition by palladio for example that we will look at in two weeks time the text is accompanied by beautiful drawings of the orders which were sources for the architects of the italian renaissance and also for all subsequent um classical architects so that&#39;s an important um part of the book and then in book five chapter four of book five he deals with harmonics with ideas of musical harmony and this is important for a number of reasons you will find that the explanation and this is the only part of the book in which the explanation is shall we say rather impenetrable it&#39;s not well explained and so don&#39;t dwell on it just have a look through it but it kind of suggests that vitruvius did not fully understand it so why did he include it well that seems to have been because it was actively used by the architects of roman antiquity so he felt that he couldn&#39;t leave it out it suggests that it was in common use in roman times and it would become very important in the italian renaissance as we&#39;ll see in the lecture on palladio in two weeks time now although um the understanding of harmonics from the truist treatment of it seems very confused in fact the general principles are really quite simple and i will be taking you through these in the lecture on palladio so don&#39;t get um hung up on this uh at this stage because um the explanation of of harmonics and of how it is applied in building um is relatively straightforward so we&#39;ll see about that in uh in two weeks time uh the book also deals with uh in book six uh climate proportions of rooms exposure of rooms so have a look at those um let me draw your attention in book seven chapter three to his explanation of stucco work because i think that gives a good demonstration of uh vitruvius&#39;s knowledge of building instruction he didn&#39;t know what he was talking about when it came to how buildings were put together and then in book 8 i&#39;m drawing your attention to chapter 2 on rainwater which is just one part of bouquet but it does indicate his treatment of that indicates the extent to which the roman architects had to be concerned with the sighting of buildings with the resources that were available to two buildings so a quick glance through the book then don&#39;t dwell on every word but um do just um have a look through it and um and just try to take the general flavor of it and we will have a discussion about it obviously in the um in the tutorial later in the week well i&#39;m going to conclude this lecture by looking at um one of the major buildings of roman antiquity the baths of caracalla in rome which was one of the largest and most complex building projects ever carried out in roman antiquity and indeed in any age of architecture it presents it presented formidable problems of structure spatial organization as well as the management of resources and although it dates from the third century ce around well more than 200 years after the truvias treatise was written it nevertheless demonstrates the application of many of the ideas that vitruvius discusses the resources issues that confronted the designers and builders of the bath of caracalla have been well described in a paper on the building by the archaeologist janet de lane which is in fact concerned principally with the management of construction resources so i&#39;ve i&#39;ve given the reference to that paper if you&#39;re interested uh in the text for the lecture which will be available on learn and also at the end of the of the powerpoint presentation uh which is also will also be up on learn and i should say that delane&#39;s paper is referred to in a new book published this year by barnabas calder called architecture from prehistory to climate emergency and um this gives an interesting account of this building the building uh the the bath of um caracalla so let me draw attention your attention to that as well and again the references will be in the lecture text well the building was a bath house which in roman times was a center not just for bathing but for social activity and interactions of all kinds and the primary requirement was for a series of covered spaces with controlled environments ranging from hot through tipid to cold unheated to ambient temperature many of them provided with plunge pools a major uncovered swimming pool and two uncovered exercise regards were also provided so let&#39;s just have a look at what the building consisted of now it&#39;s a very large building depicted here the entrance is on this side so one came in on this side and this is the uncovered swimming pool there&#39;s a very large interior space which is the frigidairium the cold room and then one passed through the teppaderium to the hot rooms which were on the other side of the building and looking at the building from the other side these are the hot rooms facing south getting the um the hot roman sun and provided with generous windows to allow the sunlight to um to flood in the um this is the entrance uh side of the building with the open air swimming pool so one came in here and the frigidairium beyond and the calderium beyond that and in the section here here is the open air swimming pool and then into the frigidaire which is the largest space in the building and here is the frigidairium the largest space in the building and um a conjectured illustration of what how the building will have been used we&#39;re looking here from the frigidaire through into the um into the swimming pool and this by the way is this depiction is not of the bath of caracalla it actually depicts the bars of diocletian which was a very similar building but note the juxtaposition of smallish and very large volumes plunge pools in the bases of these smaller spaces and here we are a depiction by alma the dema at the end of the 19th century of what went on in this in this building so the building was a bath house which was a center not just for bathing but for all kinds of social activity and let&#39;s look firstly in thinking of the problems that the architect of this building had to solve at its sighting and orientation its physician close to higher ground so that and this was to facilitate water flow through it so water was introduced from an aqueduct into cisterns and then flowed by gravity into the hot end of the building where the furnaces under the floors heated the water to create the the hot room the calderium the water then flowed through into the into the colder parts of the building eventually ending up in the swimming pool and then downwards again into a drain so the site of the building was carefully selected so as to allow its functioner to allow the the water flow through it which was a very important part obviously of its function then it was not just randomly oriented the hot rooms were on the south side to the hottest part of the building um to to take the um the advantage of the afternoon sun the building is remarkable for the way in which the structural requirements that had to be met to create a series of large enclosures in various types of masonry were integrated with the space planning of the building to create a sequence of visually exciting interconnected interiors and to the attention that was paid to the careful management of resources now to build a large enclosure in roman times they had to use masonry and that meant that they had to use a vaulted form of construction in order to achieve long spans to create large interiors the development of the roman vault is interesting a vault exerts side thrust on whatever supports it and this tends to cause the walls of a large interior if it&#39;s roofing a large interior to be pushed over so the walls have to be thick in order to be stable in order that they don&#39;t get pushed over by the vault but the romans very quickly realized that although the vault the walls had to be thick they didn&#39;t have to be solid so a voided kind of support wall was developed and this of course produced a huge saving in material a development of that was the cross vault which again was supported on voided walls but which had crossballs which afforded flat areas of um wall above the um or at the vault level which meant that windows could be located there which would admit light into what would otherwise be a rather dark interior so the form of the main spaces in the building of the bats of karakala this form the cross-vaulted um form uh supported on voided walls was determined entirely from the from the practical problems associated with the construction of the vault then looking at the sequence of construction the way in which they built the building was to have a thin skin of brick which was a relatively expensive material and make the bulk of the vault from stone rubble which was locally available sourced locally um so this was an economical way of constructing the building and then to finish it they clad this structural amateur in multi-colored marble to produce a sumptuous architecture of the interior in which the um the spaces and the volumes which were originated out of necessity out of structural necessity were used to create an interesting sequence of architectural spaces a very interesting architecture of the interior now this is the way of making a building that is described in vitruvius that you don&#39;t start with some sort of preconceived idea of what the form should be the form is generated out of what you have to do in order to create the spaces in an economic way and then the architecture emerges from from that so virtually every form of the structural artery of the base of caracalla and of the building were determined from structural considerations and the considerations of how they would be constructed and this was an enormous building as these um remains show so what we are seeing here this is the main space the frigidaire these are the voided walls that supported the vault now gone and of course all the marvel um was stripped from the building in the italian renaissance and incorporated into the various classical buildings of the italian renaissance so the building was it didn&#39;t fall down it didn&#39;t fall to pieces it was um it was dismantled uh for its and used as a quarry for building materials for subsequent um for subsequent architecture this slide shows how the building may have looked uh when it was in use uh and contrasting it with um how it looks in the present day well the building is remarkable um for the way in which the resources required to build it were managed and the use of voltage problems of construction meant that the amount of material that was required to cover the total area of the building was relatively modest and this was a primary factor in minimizing the energy that was required for its construction the embodied energy in the terminology of the present day the manner in which and here is um an earlier an aerial photograph of um of the building in the present day but the manage the manner in which the embodied energy was distributed is of considerable interest as a demonstration of the careful way in which this was um carried out by the designers of the building and it reflects the variation in the v the availability of the various types of energy that was available to the builders three types of energy in particular were crucial human energy directly related to the number of laborers involved in constructing the building heat energy the energy required for making some of the building materials and the most important of these were bricks and lime which required furnace temperatures of around 1000 degrees centigrade this consumed large quantities of the only fuel available which was charcoal available timber resources for making charcoal were therefore a consideration especially as timber was used as fuel for other purposes and transport energy the energy required to transport the materials to the site and and this was minimized by sourcing materials uh locally so the form adopted for the building was heavily influenced by the availability and therefore cost of these three components of embodied energy the use of the vaulted form for the principal structural elements involved geometric complexity and that in turn required considerable input of labor this form of energy was readily available in rome at the time and it should be noted that the people who built this building were not slaves they were salaried um laborers who were paid for their work but this form of energy human energy if you like was readily available in rome at the time the ultimate source of course was food and this was also readily available in the form of grain from egypt climate was an important factor climate historians tell us that between 600 bce and 300 ce the climate of egypt was particularly favorable for the growth of grain and egypt was in fact the bread basket of the roman empire that allowed the growth of large urban centres of which rome itself was the largest and this period ended with climate change that occurred naturally in the 3rd century ce the climate became colder and less predictable and it had been argued that this was primarily responsible for the fall of the roman empire a fascinating topic that we cannot go into here a secondary benefit of the adoption of a labour-intensive method of construction for the mass of karakala was the provision of employment for the urban poor of rome and this was of course always a concern for emperors who had to avoid social unrest as a potential threat to their power the two other required energy and boots for transport and heat were in much shorter supply than labor energy and the form of the building was organized to minimize the requirements for these the energy source for transport was of course forage for draft animals such as oxen the availability of this resource which is obviously related to climate and geography will have been well understood and of immediate concern to the planets of the building rome was essentially an agrarian economy the bulk of the material for the building was sourced locally from within 20 miles of rome to minimize transport cost to minimize the heat energy required the quantities of lime and bricks in the fabric of the building were kept as small as possible lime accounted for only 3.2 percent of the volume and bricks 2.7 percent of the volume 76 76 of the bulk of the building consisted of stone rubble that consumed no heat energy and it was sourced locally one serious extravagance so far as materials were concerned was the use of marble for ornamentation but by confining this to a thin veneer applied to the surfaces of the structural armature the requirement for this was minimized and marble accounted for only 0.5 percent of the bulk of the building so the architects who designed this building were concerned that it satisfied all the requirements it provided a set of well-serviced spaces that worked well for their intended purpose it produced a major public monument that enhanced the standing of the emperor and it represented a careful use of available resources it was also produced from resources that were renewable from the viewpoint of our own time it offers an example of how a monumental building of architectural quality with highly complex programmatic functions can be created from materials and energy sources that are renewable if in the present day we&#39;re looking for an example of how to create a major building from resources that are a low carbon footprint and renewable this is it this is how to do it and it encapsulated all of the victruvian qualities it has firmness the building was sensibly configured structurally it has commodity it satisfied multiple functional requirements well and delight it provided sequences of well-proportioned spaces and volumes ornamentated in marvel that were highly satisfying aesthetically now the building in the present day is a ruin but we should not think that this was because it was not durable it was because it was dismantled in the italian renaissance this building the baths of diocletian a very similar building to the base of caracalla has survived in the present day and because it was not dismantled at the time of the italian nationals it was converted into a church the basilica of santa maria del angeli which is one of the grandest buildings in present-day rome so this demonstrates that this building which was built sensibly with renewable materials was in fact highly durable this is a sustainable form of architecture so we can learn a lot from vitruvius he wrote a treatise that was concerned with how to build buildings while at the same time paying due respect to the wider environment by using resources in sensible ways having regard to local conditions of climate and geography he recognized that architecture should not be mere building and should have symbolic meaning an important aspect of this was the proportioning of all parts of buildings particularly individual rooms and also the achievement of meaningful relationships between different parts of buildings through the use of modular systems what he called symmetry symmetry the work therefore vitruvius&#39;s book has something that architects in the 21st century can learn from it has a timeless quality which is surely the sign of a great work and this was recognized by the many scholars who have worked on it over the centuries and produced new versions of it it is a work with which all historians of architecture need to be familiar well we&#39;ll discuss it in the tutorial and i&#39;ll look forward to doing that with you later in the week

Transcript for:Introduction to Vitruvius and *De Architectura*

Transcript for:
Introduction to Vitruvius and De Architectura