Ceilings: History and Purpose
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A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces covering a area, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are commonly used to cover floor and roof construction. They have been favourite spaces for decoration from the earliest eras: either in coating the flat surface, in emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or in dedicating it as a field for an overall pattern of relief.
Little more than guesswork is known of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were rich with relief and painting, as is found at the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. During the Gothic period, the common design to use structural aspects decoratively then came to the development of the beamed ceiling, in which huge cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being strongly chamfered and molded and usually painted in attractive colours.
In the Renaissance, ceiling design was developed to its highest tip of individuality and differentiation. Three kinds were further developed. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the delicate design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far outdid their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers abounded, with their edges delicately carved and the field of every coffer flourished with a rosette. The second type consisted of ceilings fully or mostly vaulted, mostly with arched intersections, with painted bands showcasing the architectural design and with pictures filling the remainder of the space. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a prime demonstration of this. During the Baroque period, fantastic figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also used to decorate ceilings of this type. The Pitti Palace in Florence and many French ceilings in the Louis XIV style show this. In the third kind, which was especially coined of Venice, the ceiling became one single framed image, like in the Doges’ Palace.
In modern architecture ceilings often are separated into two major kinds — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at a distance below the structural members, some architects have worked to cover great amounts of mechanical and electrical equipment, such as electrical conduits, air-conditioning ducts, water pipes, sewage lines, and lighting fixtures. Most suspended ceilings utilize a lightweight metal grid suspended from the structure by wires or rods to hold up plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.
Other architects, bringing out the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, take pleasure in showcasing the mechanical and electrical equipment. In response to this inclination, some structural systems have been put in place that have a deliberately expressive power in themselves and make for desirable ceilings.
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