Ceilings: History and Purpose
A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces above a space, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are often placed to hide floor and roof construction. They have been particular points for decor from the earliest periods: either in painting the plain surface, by featuring the structural members of roof or floor, or in commandeering it as a surface for an allover pattern of relief.
Little is known of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were richly designed with relief as well as painting, as is seen at the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. In the Gothic period, the general tendency to utilize structural parts 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 thickly chamfered and molded and commonly painted in attractive colours.
In the Renaissance, ceiling design was adapted to its highest tip of individuality and difference. Three options were elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the complex design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far outdid their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers were popular, with their edges richly carved and the field of each coffer marked with a rosette. The second type consisted of ceilings fully or in parts vaulted, mostly with arched intersections, with painted bands highlighting the architectural design and with pictures covering the rest of the space. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a good demonstration of this. During the Baroque period, wondrous figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also brought in to decorate ceilings of this form. The Pitti Palace in Florence and many French ceilings in the Louis XIV style demonstrate this. In the third kind, which was particularly iconic of Venice, the ceiling became one single framed image, like in the Doges’ Palace.
In modern day architecture ceilings may be split into two major forms — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at a distance below the structural members, some architects have sought to conceal large 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 have a lightweight metal grid suspended from the structure by wires or rods to support plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.
Other architects, emphasizing the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, take pleasure in exposing the mechanical and electrical equipment. From this design, many structural systems have been created that have an expressive power in themselves and become popular ceilings.
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