Ceilings: History and Purpose
A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces covering a area, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are mostly used to conceal floor and roof construction. They have been favoured spaces for decoration from the earliest periods: either in coating the plain surface, in emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or by dedicating it as a space for an allover pattern of relief.
Only a little is known of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were designed richly with relief as well as painting, as is found by the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. In the Gothic period, the widespread theme was to utilize structural parts decoratively then came to the instigation of the beamed ceiling, for which large cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being strongly chamfered and molded and generally painted in bright colours.
During the Renaissance, ceiling design was evolved to its highest point of uniqueness and differentiation. Three types were further developed. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the delicate design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far bettered their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers abounded, with their edges richly carved and the field of each coffer flourished with a rosette. The second form consisted of ceilings wholly or mostly vaulted, mostly with arched intersections, with painted bands bringing out the architectural design and with pictures covering the remainder of the area. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a good demonstration 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 illustrate this. In the third sort, which was particularly characteristic of Venice, the ceiling became one huge framed picture, as seen in the Doges’ Palace.
In contemporary architecture ceilings are sometimes split into two major kinds — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at some distance under the structural members, some architects have decided to conceal large 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, featuring the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, take enjoyment in showing the mechanical and electrical equipment. Because of this desire, some structural systems have been put in place that have a deliberately expressive power in themselves and make for admirable ceilings.
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