Roman Pleasure Villas

I. Context: Time and spaces designed for pleasure  A. Why didn’t Roman pleasure villas emerge before the mid 1st century BC?

Farming “villa rustica” owned by city-dweller at Boscoreale, Italy, 1st cen. BC

I. B. Roman Villa Ideology: How did Romans come to justify the creation of villas?

city life/business (negotium) necessitates leisure (otium)

Roman fresco of a seaside villaThe fora in downtown Rome

“It is not without reason that those great men our ancestors preferred country people to city-dwellers; for just as in the country those who live in the luxury villa are lazier than those who work in the fields, so they believed those who stay in town to be more indolent than those who life in the country” (Varro, Rerum rusticarum, II. i).

Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, Italy, A.D. 118-125 (Imperial)

model

Aerial view of most of Hadrian’s Villa

II. Villa design: loosening the Roman preference for spatial control

II. A. Functions: Experiences a pleasure villa should offer to the owner

Pliny’s Tuscan Villa

2nd century AD

2nd century AD

Pliny’s Laurentine Villa

Hadrian’s Villa3.

Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli

Hadrian’s Villa

Rome

II. A. 1. From Pliny’s letter, what are important qualities of a site suitable for a pleasure villa and are they satisfied at Hadrian’s Villa?

1.2.

Hadrian’s Villa

II. A. 2. Easy access to the restorative effects of nature: What are some examples of how architects design for the interpenetration of nature and living space in a pleasure villa?

Scenic Canal and Triclinium Island Enclosure

Hadrian’s Villa, ambulatory wall

II. A. 3. How does the plan encouraged walking and exercise?

II. A. 4. How did the pleasure of the eye determine villa design?

Hadrian’s Villa: East West Terrace

No single controlling idea = no cohesive overall plan

But, individual portions have consistent axes (echoes of the ideal)

Hadrian’s Villa

II. B. Villa design principles: Strategies for an exhilarating subjective experience at Hadrian’s Villa

Good villa design should make one’s real-life routine inconvenient.

Hadrian’s Villa, ambulatory wall opening draws visitor into the Island Enclosure

optical linkage to the next experience

II. B. 1. How does the design urge inhabitants to move on to successive experiences, rather than simultaneous experiences?

Hadrian’s Villa, Island Enclosure

II. B. 2. How are last minute revelations or surprises arranged?

actual state reconstructive rendering

Hadrian’s Villa, Scenic Canal and Triclinium

II. B. 3. How do strong contrasts enhance perceptual sensations?

Hadrian’s Villa, Scenic Canal and Triclinium

II. B. 3.

Hadrian’s Villa, Scenic Triclinium with view back out

II. B. 3.

III. The Imperial quality – i.e., emperor-enhancing – of Hadrian’s pleasure villa

III. A. Making Hadrian’s Villa look like it had a long history leading to Hadrian with a promising future 1. Buildings that glorify the past of Classical architecture

Doric tholosDoric tholos

III. A. 2. Buildings that reveal the future potential of Classical architecture a. new exploitations of the curve

Island Enclosure - tiny atrium at the center Reverse curve pavilion

Scenic Triclinium

III. A. 2. b. Experiments with new vaulting types

Scalloped and gored hemispherical vaultmounted on a cylindrical ground plan

Gored dome with slim columns at the angles carrying impost blocks which appeared to be the springing point of both the vault and the arches, creating a double ring of arches.

Vestibule of the Water Court

Hadrian’s Villa, Scenic Canal and Triclinium

III. A. 2. c. manipulation of classical orders

arcuated lintel

III. A. 2. c.

Unfluted Ionic orderSquare (!) Doric “columns” in the hall of the Ceremonial Precinct

RomanRepublic

RomanEmpire

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HellenisticGreece

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