Ceilings: History and Purpose
A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces over a room, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are often placed to conceal floor and roof construction. They have been particular places for decor from the earliest eras: either in painting the plain surface, by emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or in treating it as an area for an allover pattern of relief.
Little is proved of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were designed richly with relief and painting, as is found in the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. During the Gothic period, the common theme was to utilize structural aspects decoratively then came to the development of the beamed ceiling, for which big cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being thickly chamfered and molded and usually painted in beautiful colours.
In the Renaissance, ceiling design was progressed to its highest peak of originality and differentiation. Three forms were further elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the complex design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far bettered their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers were produced, with their edges intricately carved and the field of each coffer flourished with a rosette. The second type consisted of ceilings fully or in parts vaulted, usually with arched intersections, with painted bands foregrounding the architectural design and with pictures covering the remainder of the space. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a prime example of this. During the Baroque period, wondrous figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also used to decorate ceilings of this form. The Pitti Palace in Florence and many French ceilings in the Louis XIV style show this. In the third kind, which was markedly iconic of Venice, the ceiling became one large framed painting, like in the Doges’ Palace.
In contemporary architecture ceilings often are separated into two major varieties — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at a distance below the structural members, some architects have decided to cover super amounts of mechanical and electrical equipment, such as electrical conduits, air-conditioning ducts, water pipes, sewage lines, and lighting fixtures. Many suspended ceilings feature a lightweight metal grid suspended from the structure by wires or rods to support plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.
Other architects, desiring the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, delight in showing the mechanical and electrical equipment. Because of this desire, many structural systems have been put in place that have a deliberate power in themselves and make for desirable ceilings.
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