Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples

Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples PDF Author: Mantha Zarmakoupi
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199678383
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This study explores Roman luxury villa lifestyle and architecture to shed light on the villas' design as a dynamic process related to cultural, social, and environmental factors. Through an analysis of five villas from around the bay of Naples, it shows how the Romans developed a sophisticated interplay between architecture and landscape.

Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples

Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples PDF Author: Mantha Zarmakoupi
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199678383
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Get Book

Book Description
This study explores Roman luxury villa lifestyle and architecture to shed light on the villas' design as a dynamic process related to cultural, social, and environmental factors. Through an analysis of five villas from around the bay of Naples, it shows how the Romans developed a sophisticated interplay between architecture and landscape.

The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin

The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin PDF Author: Annalisa Marzano
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316732541
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 1339

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Book Description
This volume offers a comprehensive survey of Roman villas in Italy and the Mediterranean provinces of the Roman Empire, from their origins to the collapse of the Empire. The architecture of villas could be humble or grand, and sometimes luxurious. Villas were most often farms where wine, olive oil, cereals, and manufactured goods, among other products, were produced. They were also venues for hospitality, conversation, and thinking on pagan, and ultimately Christian, themes. Villas spread as the Empire grew. Like towns and cities, they became the means of power and assimilation, just as infrastructure, such as aqueducts and bridges, was transforming the Mediterranean into a Roman sea. The distinctive Roman/Italian villa type was transferred to the provinces, resulting in Mediterranean-wide culture of rural dwelling and work that further unified the Empire.

Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden

Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden PDF Author: Victoria Austen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350265195
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book demonstrates how the Romans constructed garden boundaries specifically in order to open up or undermine the division between a number of oppositions, such as inside/outside, sacred/profane, art/nature, and real/imagined. Using case studies from across literature and material and visual culture, Victoria Austen explores the perception of individual garden sites in response to their limits, and showcases how the Romans delighted in playing with concepts of boundedness and separation. Transculturally, the garden is understood as a marked-off and cultivated space. Distinct from their surroundings, gardens are material and symbolic spaces that constitute both universal and culturally specific ways of accommodating the natural world and expressing human attitudes and values. Although we define these spaces explicitly through the notions of separation and division, in many cases we are unable to make sense of the most basic distinction between 'garden' and 'not-garden'. In response to this ambiguity, Austen interrogates the notion of the 'boundary' as an essential characteristic of the Roman garden.

The Origins of Concrete Construction in Roman Architecture

The Origins of Concrete Construction in Roman Architecture PDF Author: Marcello Mogetta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108845681
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
A study of the innovation and transfer of the building technology at the root of ancient Rome's architectural revolution.

Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae

Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae PDF Author: Maryl B. Gensheimer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190902612
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Across the Roman Empire, ubiquitous archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence attests to the significance of bathing for Romans' routines and relationships. Public baths were popularly viewed as necessities of daily life and important social venues. Given the importance of bathing to the Roman style of living, by endowing eight magnificent baths (the so-called imperial thermae) in the city of Rome between 25 BCE - 315 CE, imperial patrons greatly enhanced their popular and political stature. Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae presents a detailed analysis of the extensive decoration of the best preserved of these bathing complexes, the Baths of Caracalla (inaugurated 216 CE). Maryl B. Gensheimer takes an interdisciplinary approach to existing archaeological data, textual and visual sources, and anthropological theories in order to generate a new understanding of the visual experience of the Baths of Caracalla and show how the decoration played a critical role in advancing imperial agendas. This reassessment of one of the most ambitious and sophisticated examples of large-scale architectural patronage in Classical antiquity examines the specific mechanisms through which an imperial patron could use architectural decoration to emphasize his own unique sociopolitical position relative to the thousands of people who enjoyed his benefaction. The case studies addressed herein--ranging from architectural to freestanding sculpture and mosaic--demonstrate that sponsoring monumental baths was hardly an act of altruism. Rather, even while they provided recreation for elite and sub-altern Romans alike, such buildings were concerned primarily with dynastic legitimacy and imperial largess. Decorative programs articulated these themes by consistently drawing analogies between the subjects of the decoration and the emperor who had paid for it. The unified decorative program--and the messages of imperial power therein--adroitly honored the emperor and consolidated his reputation.

A Companion to Roman Architecture

A Companion to Roman Architecture PDF Author: Roger B. Ulrich
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118325133
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
A Companion to Roman Architecture presents a comprehensive review of the critical issues and approaches that have transformed scholarly understanding in recent decades in one easy-to-reference volume. Offers a cross-disciplinary approach to Roman architecture, spanning technology, history, art, politics, and archaeology Brings together contributions by leading scholars in architectural history An essential guide to recent scholarship, covering new archaeological discoveries, lesser known buildings, new technologies and space and construction Includes extensive, up-to-date bibliography and glossary of key Roman architectural terms

Living Theatre in the Ancient Roman House

Living Theatre in the Ancient Roman House PDF Author: Richard C. Beacham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009041274
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 926

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Book Description
For the Romans, much of life was seen, expressed and experienced as a form of theatre. In their homes, patrons performed the lead, with a supporting cast of residents and visitors. This sumptuously illustrated book, the result of extensive interdisciplinary research, is the first to investigate, describe and show how ancient Roman houses and villas, in their décor, spaces, activities and function, could constitute highly-theatricalised environments, indeed, a sort of 'living theatre'. Their layout, purpose and use reflected and informed a culture in which theatre was both a major medium of entertainment and communication and an art form drawing upon myths exploring the core values and beliefs of society. For elite Romans, their homes, as veritable stage-sets, served as visible and tangible expressions of their owners' prestige, importance and achievements. The Roman home was a carefully crafted realm in which patrons displayed themselves, while 'stage-managing' the behaviour and responses of visitor-spectators.

Shaping Roman Landscape

Shaping Roman Landscape PDF Author: Mantha Zarmakoupi
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606068504
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A groundbreaking ecocritical study that examines how ideas about the natural and built environment informed architectural and decorative trends of the Roman Late Republican and Early Imperial periods. Landscape emerged as a significant theme in the Roman Late Republican and Early Imperial periods. Writers described landscape in texts and treatises, its qualities were praised and sought out in everyday life, and contemporary perceptions of the natural and built environment, as well as ideas about nature and art, were intertwined with architectural and decorative trends. This illustrated volume examines how representations of real and depicted landscapes, and the merging of both in visual space, contributed to the creation of novel languages of art and architecture. Drawing on a diverse body of archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence, this study applies an ecocritical lens that moves beyond the limits of traditional iconography. Chapters consider, for example, how garden designs and paintings appropriated the cultures and ecosystems brought under Roman control and the ways miniature landscape paintings chronicled the transformation of the Italian shoreline with colonnaded villas, pointing to the changing relationship of humans with nature. Making a timely and original contribution to current discourses on ecology and art and architectural history, Shaping Roman Landscape reveals how Roman ideas of landscape, and the decorative strategies at imperial domus and villa complexes that gave these ideas shape, were richly embedded with meanings of nature, culture, and labor.

The Architecture of Luxury

The Architecture of Luxury PDF Author: Annette Condello
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317044770
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Over the past century, luxury has been increasingly celebrated in the sense that it is no longer a privilege (or attitude) of the European elite or America’s leisure class. It has become more ubiquitous and now, practically everyone can experience luxury, even luxury in architecture. Focusing on various contexts within Western Europe, Latin America and the United States, this book traces the myths and application of luxury within architecture, interiors and designed landscapes. Spanning from antiquity to the modern era, it sets out six historical categories of luxury - Sybaritic, Lucullan, architectural excess, rustic, neoEuropean and modern - and relates these to the built and unbuilt environment, taking different cultural contexts and historical periods into consideration. It studies some of the ethical questions raised by the nature of luxury in architecture and discusses whether architectural luxury is an unqualified benefit or something which should only be present within strict limits. The author argues how the ideas of permissible and impermissible luxury have informed architecture and how these notions of ethical approval have changed from one context to another. Providing voluptuous settings for the nobles and the leisure class, luxury took the form of not only grand palaces, but also follies, country and suburban houses, private or public entertainment venues and ornate skyscrapers with fast lifts. The Architecture of Luxury proposes that in Western societies the growth of the leisure classes and their desire for various settings for pleasure resulted in a constantly increasing level of ’luxury’ sought within everyday architecture.

Roman Architecture

Roman Architecture PDF Author: Janet DeLaine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192699997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Roman Architecture casts new light not only on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the Roman empire. Rome and its empire were fundamental to the development of western architecture, and its forms and motifs remain significant elements of our own built environments. Roman Architecture places the varied architecture of ancient Rome, from its humble apartment blocks to its grand public structures, within the broader context of Roman society. It takes as its starting point the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius, as one voice in a broader contemporary debate about the nature and value of architecture. What did the Romans themselves think architecture was for? What was built, by whom and why? How was architecture represented in text and image? The interplay of type and variation that are the hallmark Roman architecture are here traced back to the human actions and choices from which they originated. Janet DeLaine explores how the desires of patrons for novelty and individuality were met by architects and builders working within the practical constraints of available materials and the moral prescriptions of religious and social norms to create new forms. Ranging from early Rome to the late empire, this volume casts new light on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the empire. Through an examination of the key types of buildings at the heart of Roman society and their decoration, it reveals the symbolic meaning of architecture in terms of competitive power displays and commemoration, and it explores how architecture helped to define being 'Roman' at different times and in different places of the empire.