a small research project completed in our spare time over two weeks during summer university

1. The Villa & Sustainability Lessons
Learned from Ancient Rome
Maljetë HOXHA
Leandro GATTI
Ivan MANYONGA
Anca SCAESTEANU
INEX.org │ Green. Building. Solutions. │ Vienna Summer University | August 13, 2011
Revised January 4, 2012 – A. Scaesteanu

2. the vast ROMAN EMPIRE in 3 short slides...
The Roman Empire was at its largest under Emperor Trajan in 117 CE
with 6.5 million km² (2.5 million mi²). The imperial city of Rome was
the largest urban center of its time, with a population of about
one million people.

3. Roman society
Hierarchical:
• slaves (servi) at the bottom,
• freedmen (liberti) above them,
• free-born citizens (cives) at the top.
Women had some basic rights (owning
property) but were not allowed to vote
or take part in politics.
The basic units of Roman society were
households and families.

4. Economy & Welfare
Roman dominance over foreign
areas led to internal strife. Senators
became rich, but soldiers, who were
mostly small-scale farmers, were away
from home and could not keep up their
land. The increased reliance on foreign
slaves and the growth of large farms
reduced the availability of paid work.
Income from war, trade in the new provinces, and tax farming created new
economic opportunities for the wealthy, forming a new class of merchants,
the equestrians.
Violent gangs of the urban unemployed, controlled by rival Senators,
intimidated the electorate through violence. In trying to placate the growing
unrest of the plebeian and equestrian classes, the Senate passed land reform
legislation to redistribute major patrician landholdings among the plebeians.

5. Environment & Climate
Rome currently has a “Mediterranean climate”: warm to
hot long dry summers and mild to cool winters with
long wet periods. Native vegetation is adapted to
survive this climate, but much has been replaced by
agriculture.

6. Environment & Climate
“In the north, houses should be entirely roofed over
and sheltered as much as possible, not in the open,
though having a warm exposure. But on the other
hand, where the force of the sun is great in the
southern countries that suffer from heat, houses must
be built more in the open and with a northern or
north-eastern exposure. Thus we may amend by
art what nature, if left to herself, would mar.”
– Roman architect Vitruvius,
De architectura, 15 BCE

7. Roman Climate Change?
A recent study of the size variations of ancient tree
rings provides data on historical climate (January
2011, Science journal), though not the reasons for
the climate changes noticed. The study concluded
that Europe experienced warm, wet summers
ideal for agriculture during times of social
stability and prosperity, coinciding with the
rise of the Roman Empire (300 BCE to 200 CE)
and that during the 3rd century CE extended
droughts occurred at the same time as
barbarian invasions and political turmoil (the
fall of the Roman Empire).

8. Climate & culture vs building type

9. Building Orientation
Vitruvius, De architectura:
“We shall next explain how the special purposes of different
rooms require different exposures, suited to convenience
and to the quarters of the sky. Winter dining rooms and
bathrooms should have a southwestern exposure, for the
reason that they need the evening light, and also because the
setting sun, facing them in all its splendor but with abated heat,
lends a gentler warmth to that quarter in the evening. Bedrooms
and libraries ought to have an eastern exposure,
because their purposes require the morning light, and
also because books in such libraries will not decay. In libraries with
southern exposures the books are ruined by worms and dampness,
because damp winds come up, which breed and nourish the worms,
and destroy the books with mold, by spreading their damp breath
over them.”

10. Building Orientation (continued)
Vitruvius, De architectura:
“Dining rooms for Spring and Autumn to the east; for when the
windows face that quarter, the sun, as he goes on his career from
over against them to the west, leaves such rooms at the
proper temperature at the time when it is customary to
use them. Summer dining rooms to the north, because that
quarter is not, like the others, burning with heat during
the solstice, for the reason that it is unexposed to the
sun's course, and hence it always keeps cool, and makes
the use of the rooms both healthy and agreeable. Similarly with
picture galleries, embroiderers' work rooms, and painters' studios, in
order that the fixed light may permit the colours used in their work
to last with qualities unchanged.”

11. Urban Planning: Layout
The town plan adopted by the
Romans in the construction of
cities in the Empire is
characterized by perpendicular
North-South and East-West
streets (thistles and decumani),
dividing a city into
rectangular blocks.
Rome was an exception to this
rule and had no planned pattern.
Its urban layout was
influenced by the shape of
the land, streams, hills, and
partially drained marshes.

12. Infrastructure: Water
When wells, local springs, and the Tiber
River became polluted, Romans
developed aqueduct technology (312
B.C.E.) to bring clean water from
further away.
Once in or near Rome, the water poured
into a large, covered catch-basin to
deposit sediment. The water was then
distributed through free-flowing canals,
lead pipes, and terra-cotta pipes to storage
reservoirs and then through lead pipes
(fistulae) to users. The number of
connections to private customers were
limited; most Romans had to get their
supply of domestic water from public
fountains.
Having running water at home was so
desirable that Romans were constantly
bribing water officials to tap an aqueduct.

13. Infrastructure: Wastewater
The Cloaca Maxima (“Greatest
Sewer”) drainage system, with a
main outlet into the Tiber River,
was built by Etruscan engineers
around 600 BC under the orders
of the king of Rome. It combined
sewage and storm runoff
together. It had few private
connections, such as some of the
wealthier homes. Parts of the
system were built underground
and others were probably initially
an open drain with a cover added
later. The waste stream was kept
moving by the continuous flow of
water leaving the public baths.

14. Infrastructure: Roadways
Roads between cities were well-
built for the transport of armies and
economic trade. They were
constructed with stones mixed with
cement and sand, cement mixed with
broken tiles, and curving stones to drain
stormwater.
A visitor to ancient Rome generally had
trouble navigating the urban parts
of Rome. Most of the residential streets
were not named, and houses and
apartments were not numbered. There
were few sidewalks. Streets were narrow
and crowded. Walking Rome’s street
was frequently dangerous, since it was
not unusual to dispose of trash by
throwing it out of windows.

15. Renewable Energy
The Romans had water
power, and watermills were
common throughout the
Empire, especially to the end
of the first century AD. They
were used for corn milling,
sawing timber and crushing
ore.
Room heating was more
efficient with charcoal braziers
than hypocausts, but
hypocausts allowed the use of
poor-quality smoky fuels like
straw, vine prunings, and
small wood locally
available.

16. Roman Homes
Roman villa urbana : a country
seat that could easily be
reached from an urban city
in a night or two.
Roman villa rustica : the farm-
house estate permanently
occupied by the servants.
Domus : urban house owned
by the wealthy.
Insulae : three-to-six story
apartment buildings
occupied by the middle and
lower classes. The ground
floor of the insulae
frequently housed
commercial shops.

17. Types of homes & floor plans
Along with a domus in the city, many of
the richest families of ancient Rome also
owned a separate country house
known as a villa. While many chose to
live primarily in their villas, these homes
were generally much grander in scale
and on larger acres of land due to
more space outside the walled city.
The elite classes of Roman society
constructed their residences with
elaborate marble decorations, inlaid
marble paneling, door jambs and columns
as well as expensive paintings and
frescoes.
Many poor and lower middle class
Romans lived in crowded, dirty and
mostly rundown rental apartments,
known as insulae. These multi-level
apartment blocks were built as high and
tightly together as possible and held far
less status and convenience than the
private homes of the prosperous.

18. The DOMUS
In ancient Rome, the domus
was the type of house
occupied by the upper classes
and some wealthy freedmen
during the Republican and
Imperial eras. They could be
found in almost all the major
cities throughout the Roman
territories.
The modern English word
domestic comes from Latin
domesticus, which is derived
from the word domus. The
word dom in modern Slavic
languages means "home".

19. Impluvium – here comes the rain
The impluvium is the sunken
part of the atrium in the domus.
Designed to carry away the
rainwater coming through the
compluvium (opening) of the
roof, it was usually made of
marble and placed about 30 cm
below the floor of the atrium.
It was constructed to allow for a
certain amount of standing
water and also water would flow
down under the impluvium and
through a gravel and sand
filter into a holding chamber
(cistern) underground,
accessible via a bucket through
a small well on the edge of the
impluvium.

20. Passive Cooling
In hot weather, water could be drawn
from the cistern chamber (or fetched
by slaves from supplies outside the
domus) and cast into the shallow pool
(impluvium) to evaporate and provide a
cooling effect to the entire atrium. As
the water evaporated, the
surrounding air was cooled and
became heavier, flowed into the
living spaces, and was replaced by
air drawn through the compluvium.
The combination of the compluvium
and impluvium formed an ingenious,
effective, and attractive manner of
collecting, filtering, and cooling
rainwater and making it available for
household use as well as providing
cooling of the living spaces.

21. Building materials & construction
The elite roman society constructed
with elaborate marble decorations,
inlaid marble paneling, door jambs
and columns, and expensive paintings
and frescoes.

22. Radiant Floor Central Heating: Hypocaust
The hypocaust (hypocaustum)
was the system of central
heating for public baths
and private homes. The floor
was raised above the ground
by pillars so that hot air would
flow from the furnace, through
the underfloor space, up
through spaces in the walls,
and out through roof openings.
The furnace was fueled by
wood, which was expensive,
and required constant
attention, which is why this
was a feature only of the baths
and villas.

23. Hypocaust Energy Efficiency
In De architectura, Vitruvius
gives explicit instructions on
how to design buildings which
use hypocausts so that fuel
efficiency is maximized.
For example, at the public
baths, placing the hot
room next to the heat
source, then the warm
room, followed by the cold
room. He also advises on
using a type of regulator to
control the heat in the hot
rooms.

24. WHAT DO WE LEARN?
As the Roman Empire spread over many regions, Romans were forced to think
of a dwelling structure which would be suitable for those climatic zones.
And moreover, the challenge was designing a structure which would be
also suitable for all seasons. Based on archeological evidence reaching
from modern-day England to the Balkans, it has been demonstrated that the
Roman Villa was built in many different climate zones and some of
them still stand after 20 centuries.
During the Roman Empire the
practices of design and
construction which can be
considered sustainable and
noteworthy are:
- hydro-power
- daylight-based orientation
- passive cooling system
- advanced heating system
- rainwater collection

25. THE END
thanks for reading/listening