Ceilings: History and Purpose
A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces above a area, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are often used to hide floor and roof construction. They have been particular places for decoration from the earliest periods: either by coating the plain surface, in featuring the structural members of roof or floor, or in dedicating it as an area for an allover pattern of relief.
Only a little is understood of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were designed richly with relief and painting, as is shown by the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. In the Gothic period, the widespread tendency to bring out structural areas decoratively then came to the design of the beamed ceiling, in which big cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being richly chamfered and molded and often painted in bright colours.
In the Renaissance, ceiling design was adapted to its highest peak of uniqueness and difference. Three types were further elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the intricate design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far bettered their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers were designed, with their edges richly carved and the field of every coffer decorated with a rosette. The second kind consisted of ceilings largely or mostly vaulted, often with arched intersections, with painted bands bringing out the architectural design and with pictures covering the rest of the area. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a good example of this. During the Baroque period, mystical figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also utilized 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 a huge framed image, as seen in the Doges’ Palace.
In contemporary architecture ceilings can be split into two major varieties — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at some distance under the structural members, some architects have attempted to cover super amounts of mechanical and electrical equipment, such as electrical conduits, air-conditioning ducts, water pipes, sewage lines, and lighting fixtures. The large part of 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, take pleasure in exposing the mechanical and electrical equipment. From this trend, many structural systems have been put in place that have an expressive power in themselves and make for popular ceilings.
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