Roman Empire | EPFL Graph Search

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican state of ancient Rome. It included territory around the Mediterranean in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. The adoption of Christianity as the state church in 380 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Rome had expanded its rule to most of the Mediterranean and beyond, but became severely destabilized in civil wars and political conflicts which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. The Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching power (imperium) and the new title of Augustus, marking his accession as the first Roman emperor of a monarchy with Rome as its sole capital. The vast Roman territories were organized in senatorial and imperial provinces. The first two centuries of the Empire saw a period

Architecture Without Content 11: Roman Architecture

Kersten Geers, Jelena Pancevac, Giovanni Piovene Porto Godi, Dries Rodet, Andrea Zanderigo

This book presents the first part of an investigation in the possibility of a universal territorial architecture with a radically simple materiality. Essentially, our contemporary iteration of the Roman project is a negotiation of the European territory through the architectural project. Europe here has to be understood as a cultural and geographic entity with an enormous cultural diversity but a fascinating cohesion. The Roman project is an attempt to understand this territory as an Even Covered Field. If Europe has originally been the cradle in which the figure-ground relationship developed, it becomes now of utmost importance to look again into the place of its obsolescence. Our studio’s core interest is to better ‘define’ the even covered field and to look for tools to design in it. Manoeuvres that are capable to create hierarchies and points of reference are crucial to aspire for a certain order in a world increasingly hard to grasp. For all this, Roman Architecture is our guide, as we believe it is precisely in this proto-architecture that we find the kernel of an enlarged understanding of the architecture of hierarchies. It is about time to revive this radical and simple idea of a proto-architecture, as it might give a valuable answer to our current and fundamental desire to build without waste, to embrace a veritable equilibrium between living, working and the world. It is now that we can develop fundamentals of sustainability, not through silly rhetoric, but through the re-development of an ancient relationship between man and territory, since any architecture should celebrate the act of building as a substantial effort produced by any society in a necessary long-term perspective. Roman Architecture has the disproportionate ambition to create a base for this endeavour. It is presented here as a treatise, owing a lot to the impressive tradition developed in western architecture in the past six centuries, after the Renaissance started reworking the seminal work by Vitruvio. Its most direct ancestor is the Entwurf für eine Historische Architektur by Fisher von Erlach, although also the Recueil et parallèle des édifices de tout genre, anciens et modernes … by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand plays a fundamental role in the final definition of its content. In the course of the research, three meta-chapters have been defined, like magnetic cores able to coagulate certain constellations of projects, to organize them meaningfully. The overall collection comprises—as an echo of the organization of the Entwurf—sixty ancestors, spanning from the Pyramids of Cheops to Patchinko Parlor III, plus fifteen new projects that bridge between these. Together they present a possible canon of a universal territorial architecture with a radically simple materiality.

2015

How Smart is the Grid?

Luc Girardin, Ermanno Lo Cascio, François Maréchal

Ancient Romans called urbs the set of buildings and infrastructures, and civitas the Roman citizens. Today instead, while the society is surfing the digital tsunami, urbs and civitas tend to become much closer, almost merging, that we might attempt to condensate these into a single concept: smart grid. Internet of things, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and quantum cryptography are only a few of the technologies that are likely to contribute to determining the final portrait of the future smart grid. However, to understand the effective sustainability of complex grids, specific tools are required. To this end, in this article, a new taxonomic framework has been developed starting from a general analysis of the emerging solutions, identifying intersectoral synergies and limitations with respect to the ‘smart grid’ concept. Finally, from the scenario portrayed, a set of issues involving engineering, regulation, security, and social frameworks have been derived in a theoretical fashion. The findings are likely to suggest the urgent need for multidisciplinary cooperation to address engineering and ontological challenges gravitating around the smart grid concept.

2021

Architecture Without Content 11: Roman Architecture

Kersten Geers, Jelena Pancevac, Giovanni Piovene Porto Godi, Dries Rodet, Andrea Zanderigo

2015