When I visited Rome a couple of years ago as part of a university trip, one of the places we visited was the Bathouse of Caracalla in the south end of the city. An enormous leisure complex commissioned by the Roman emperor Septimus Severus, finished by Caracalla and first opened in 216 AD, I became deeply inspired to maybe consider building this place in the digital space as a later project. I'm sort of kicking myself I didn't consider this as my choice of major project in my third year of university as it perfectly aligns with my interests: History, architecture, grand buildings and highly ornate architecture.
Honestly spa complex is the best way of describing this site. As well as the various public bathrooms that these structures normally had where you'd move from a cold pool (frigidarium) to a medium-temperature pool (tepidarium) to a hot pool (caldarium), the bathhouse constructed by Caracalla had all kinds of leisure facilities. Gymnasia, libraries, gardens, saunae and even an amphitheatre are featured either within the building or on the surrounding grounds. The whole complex was walled off from the rest of the city in a great square dominated by decorated gardens, and while it looks like one would enter through the circular dome, the most likely entrance was closer to the gymnasia situated on the wings. I'd almost describe this building as the pinnacle of Roman pleasure-seeking. Like one of these resort hotels with the main difference being a lack of board for any attendants.
It's not just massive by land area, it's also a structure that is enormously tall for the age. The columns I have made so far reach a height of some eight metres, but the baths themselves possessed columns (of Egyptian marble no less) could be as high as twelve! Add to this the columns would merely support a second floor or a high ceiling, so the building could be two or three times the height.
The great dome of the caldarium, something of a downsized version of the dome of the Parthenon, would make the caldarium itself some four or five times the height of the columns that supported its various entrances.
For a classical building the scale was just staggering.
As this is such a massive building it's already taken me a few days to build just the geometry for the caldarium. The positive of a construction project like this is I can likely use various elements for the building already elsewhere. Roman architecture was very fond of decorated columns and a uniform structure, as the Romans adopted the Greek idea that uniformity was an expression of divinity. So to get those done first feels like it should make the rest of the project a lot easier with a lot of possibility for recycling.
My current plan is to break up the construction into several components. Key locations in the structure will class ans modules in and of themselves and I've been thinking of releasing elements like the columns and the archways to marketplaces like what ArtStation has unveiled not too long ago. I've already had at least one sale already.
I'm currently debating wither to include a translucent geometry for filled pools of water. It is definitely a distinct possibility so as to give the feeling this was a living building. I am admittedly taking a bit of artistic license with the project in that designs for what the building could have looked like seem to vary wildly between artists from the first inspirations drawn up in the 19th century (which would have been inclined to include neoclassical features) to modern-day historical recreations. I'm a sucker for the artistry that comes from Romanticism even if I have my reservations about the ideas of the movement, so I may take the Romantic angle of the building mostly as an experiment in creative design.
I'm looking forward to pushing this project further. A good portion of the Caldarium's ground floor is finished, from there I plan to decorate the upper levels which would included the recessed grid pattern the Romans used for concrete domes.
I can already see that architectural detail being a fun design prospect.
For the Caldarium specifically, the current checklist for its details are so far: The ledge for the upepr floors, the windows, the exterior recesses for the windows, wall trims, wall decoration and the structures for the entrances into other parts of the bathhouse. Which might be easier to make than what I have designed so far largely on the basis the most lavishly decorated sections of such large buildings tended to be the ground floor and the ceiling. Further up on a multi-level room the decoration might be more spartan as a visitor's eyes might not focus so much on these areas.
Although trust me to take on designing one of the iconic displays of extravagance by the Roman Emperors of the third century. Septimus Severus was the third emperor after emperor Commodus, A famously hedonistic man who saw cinema fame for his portrayal in the film Gladiator who cared more about filling his time with lavish games no matter how much it cost the city of Rome, whose death marked the beginning of Rome's slow decline as the master of the world and might have been the start of the empire turning its own interests inward and ignoring the rest of the world.
That kind of behaviour usually precludes falling into obscurity and complaining of how you've fallen into irrelevance somehow, but it doesn't half create some beautiful buildings sometimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment