The Romans had 3 architecture problems they wanted to solve: bigger indoor spaces, building faster and cheaper, and more indoor comfort. How did they solve them?
Yeah, actually up until the copernican revolution there were considered to be 7 planets (celestial bodies that move among the fixed stars): the Sun, the Moon and the 5 "wandering stars" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter)
Nice read, looking forward to seeing what you have uncovered about the other styles!
I would also be interested to hear your thoughts on Indian architecture, especially from two different periods. The 7th/8th century monolithic structures in and around the Deccan plateau built in a very Hindu style, and Mughal architecture from 16th century onwards combining foreign Islamic and traditional Indian architecture.
For the latter, I think you'd be surprised to find the divergence in styles employed due to differences in climate and geography of the regions. Such as Jamma Masjid (North) vs the Sixty Dome Mosque (East), which influenced Bengali temples later in a super cool cycle of cross-cultural pollination.
Oh I missed out on this but see that you have written out my thoughts exactly, plus parallels with other countries that I did not know about. Thanks for sharing, another very interesting read!
AI is our architecture moment. That is what i hope we drive with AI - not to reduce humans to a task, but to enhance humans to better possibilities.
A life and spiritual change moment was visiting Alhambra in Spain and realizing that the architecture represented of the time passed by and who was ruling, and the time to come. It was left unfinished - it is a symbol of what they saw as future of civilizations (for those willing to read into it). Architecture says a lot. In those days, it served as symbol for future of society.
This series reminds me of centuries ago when the transfer of knowledge and technology happened from the east to the west, as europe was coming out of its turn on “the dark ages”. One of my childhood favorite classics The Talisman was a great short example through dialogue on knowledge and technology while being compassionate as humans between Saladin and Richard For those who have not erased history, there is still homage you see in South Spain and in Italy too on those centuries of peace when religions were at peace too - historians rarely cover them becaue peace is boring writing. That was an era where knowledge and technology was put to good use and drove innovation.
What aesthetics that humans can imagine using it and what art can be brought to life using it that is not showcased in popular media. There is centuries of folk art and artists where i come from in Pakistan that the world can get exposure too instead of the typical stories shown at scale - as an example. Another example would be artists using it to create new music that they could not before due to coordination friction.
Lovely elaborations, thanks, Tomas! One curiosity is still on my mind: You describe the engineering (Roman) vs philosophising (Greek) dynamic, yet I must ask first-principled why you think these prioritisations came to be? Is Rome just in need of being more practical to sustain its predominance over an expanding empire? And the secludedness of Greek city-states allowed for more serious cognitive-philosophical work? I feel there must be more, and more exciting intercorrelations subsequently. Is there something more fundamental at work that I feel but miss seeing?
My hypothesis is that the special ones were the Greek. They created way more philosophizing than any other culture AFAIK. The amount of Greek content with have is orders of magnitude more than any other ancient civilization. I don’t know what made them this way.
In that sense, the Romans are more normal, and I think you’re pointing at the thing that made them more special: architecture might have been a consequence of their growth as an empire, as the need to build all that stuff (and the money that flowed to finance it) naturally pushed them to iterate, and hence innovate, in a way that no other empire did until then in the region
The part that gets me is: Roman concrete wasn't a design decision; it was an artifact of building on an imperial scale. They didn't plan to invent better concrete... rather they had so many buildings to construct that the problem solved itself. Simply scaling up solved the materials science problem centuries before anyone had a theory explaining why it worked.
Very nice article! I just watched Stephen Ressler lecture in a Great Courses video (Amazon Prime) in which he states the fundamental importance of the Roman roof truss in creating large indoor spaces, such as for basilicas, that were not previously possible. There seem to be some academic articles on this topic, but all behind paywalls.
Fascinating piece. I never knew that lead plumbing was an intelligent way of using a by-product of a higher-value activity. Thank you.
Which illustrates again why it's so important to look at different disciplines!
Wasn't the 5th planet Saturnus? Earth is just the ground, anyone can see that.
Maybe! I didn’t look into this into too much detail
Yeah, actually up until the copernican revolution there were considered to be 7 planets (celestial bodies that move among the fixed stars): the Sun, the Moon and the 5 "wandering stars" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter)
Or as they say ‘form follows function’
Nice read, looking forward to seeing what you have uncovered about the other styles!
I would also be interested to hear your thoughts on Indian architecture, especially from two different periods. The 7th/8th century monolithic structures in and around the Deccan plateau built in a very Hindu style, and Mughal architecture from 16th century onwards combining foreign Islamic and traditional Indian architecture.
For the latter, I think you'd be surprised to find the divergence in styles employed due to differences in climate and geography of the regions. Such as Jamma Masjid (North) vs the Sixty Dome Mosque (East), which influenced Bengali temples later in a super cool cycle of cross-cultural pollination.
You might want to complement this article from last week!
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/how-geography-determines-architecture-b9f
Oh I missed out on this but see that you have written out my thoughts exactly, plus parallels with other countries that I did not know about. Thanks for sharing, another very interesting read!
AI is our architecture moment. That is what i hope we drive with AI - not to reduce humans to a task, but to enhance humans to better possibilities.
A life and spiritual change moment was visiting Alhambra in Spain and realizing that the architecture represented of the time passed by and who was ruling, and the time to come. It was left unfinished - it is a symbol of what they saw as future of civilizations (for those willing to read into it). Architecture says a lot. In those days, it served as symbol for future of society.
This series reminds me of centuries ago when the transfer of knowledge and technology happened from the east to the west, as europe was coming out of its turn on “the dark ages”. One of my childhood favorite classics The Talisman was a great short example through dialogue on knowledge and technology while being compassionate as humans between Saladin and Richard For those who have not erased history, there is still homage you see in South Spain and in Italy too on those centuries of peace when religions were at peace too - historians rarely cover them becaue peace is boring writing. That was an era where knowledge and technology was put to good use and drove innovation.
Thanks!
AI is the tool. What aesthetics could such an architecture have?
What aesthetics that humans can imagine using it and what art can be brought to life using it that is not showcased in popular media. There is centuries of folk art and artists where i come from in Pakistan that the world can get exposure too instead of the typical stories shown at scale - as an example. Another example would be artists using it to create new music that they could not before due to coordination friction.
Lovely elaborations, thanks, Tomas! One curiosity is still on my mind: You describe the engineering (Roman) vs philosophising (Greek) dynamic, yet I must ask first-principled why you think these prioritisations came to be? Is Rome just in need of being more practical to sustain its predominance over an expanding empire? And the secludedness of Greek city-states allowed for more serious cognitive-philosophical work? I feel there must be more, and more exciting intercorrelations subsequently. Is there something more fundamental at work that I feel but miss seeing?
Very good question. I don’t have an answer.
My hypothesis is that the special ones were the Greek. They created way more philosophizing than any other culture AFAIK. The amount of Greek content with have is orders of magnitude more than any other ancient civilization. I don’t know what made them this way.
In that sense, the Romans are more normal, and I think you’re pointing at the thing that made them more special: architecture might have been a consequence of their growth as an empire, as the need to build all that stuff (and the money that flowed to finance it) naturally pushed them to iterate, and hence innovate, in a way that no other empire did until then in the region
Well, that sounds reasonable, thanks. will ponder the fundamentals of the spirit of Greek philosophy.
Further thoughts that came up:
Might be interesting to consider to what extent a Greek philosophy culture hinders the development of a serious engineering culture.
Also interesting to what extent a Roman engineering culture might have been supported in its "foundations" by a Greek philosophical-reasoning culture.
The part that gets me is: Roman concrete wasn't a design decision; it was an artifact of building on an imperial scale. They didn't plan to invent better concrete... rather they had so many buildings to construct that the problem solved itself. Simply scaling up solved the materials science problem centuries before anyone had a theory explaining why it worked.
Roman engineering is a good example of this.
What feels stable is often just a temporary equilibrium.
Zoom out, and most systems look far more fragile than they seem.
Interesting!
really interesting read thanks :)
Very cool
Very nice article! I just watched Stephen Ressler lecture in a Great Courses video (Amazon Prime) in which he states the fundamental importance of the Roman roof truss in creating large indoor spaces, such as for basilicas, that were not previously possible. There seem to be some academic articles on this topic, but all behind paywalls.