The use of concrete to vault large spans has remained perhaps the most enduring technological legacy of ancient Roman architecture; and yet, the survival of the grand engineering projects and collective spaces of the mature empire often obfuscates the nature of the actual challenges involved in building vaulting systems on a vast scale. In fact, the building of such structures presented a fundamental problem which is easy to overlook: the organisation of moulding and scaffolding, that is to say, of all the support structures that would disappear once the construction phase would be completed. The invisible component of architecture – the bodies and machines needed to produce it – were often, in fact, the main rationale behind the very form of Roman monuments and infrastructures. In this analysis of Roman construction techniques, I will reread a number of case-studies – from the Pantheon to the Nymphaeum of Minerva Medica – as the index of production processes rather than the static realisation of a design. These case-studies show how the colonial expansion of the empire determined major shifts in labour management as well as in the procurement chain, impacting architectural form far more than it is usually assumed. A cross-section of the first three centuries CE will ultimately allow us to discuss the way in which ecological pressures and class conflict pushed the Romans to devise methods that increasingly minimised scaffolding and deskilled the labour force; concrete, brick, timber, and stone, were all used in a variety of imaginative hybridisations to facilitate the production of complex forms through radically pared-back processes. In this discussion, I hope to bring to light the way in which the design of the ‘negative space’ – and its functioning – were actually the primary concerns of builders faced with social unrest and environmental collapse.
Maria Sheherazade Giudici is the editor of AA Files and the founder of research platform Black Square. She teaches design in the Diploma Programme of the Architectural Association and History and Theory at the Architecture School of the Royal College of Art.
source
