Ceilings: History and Purpose

A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces above a area, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are commonly utilized to cover floor and roof construction. They have been favoured places for decoration from the earliest periods: either in painting the flat surface, in emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or in commandeering it as a surface for an overall pattern of relief.

Only a little is proved of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were rich with relief and painting, as is evidenced in the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. In the Gothic period, the general theme was to employ structural areas decoratively then adapted to the instigation of the beamed ceiling, in which large cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being thickly chamfered and molded and often painted in decorative colours.

During the Renaissance, ceiling design was evolved to its highest point of originality and variety. Three options were elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the complex design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far emulated their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers abounded, with their edges ornately carved and the field of each coffer flourished with a rosette. The second type consisted of ceilings largely or partially vaulted, usually with arched intersections, with painted bands emphasizing the architectural design and with pictures filling the rest of the area. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a great example of this. During the Baroque period, wondrous 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 demonstrate this. In the third form, which was notably characteristic of Venice, the ceiling became one sizeable framed picture, as seen in the Doges’ Palace.

In contemporary architecture ceilings often are separated into two major kinds — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at some distance below the structural members, some architects have decided to cover 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 support plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.

Other architects, desiring the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, take enjoyment in revealing the mechanical and electrical equipment. Due to this design, many structural systems have been created that have an expressive power in themselves and become desirable ceilings.

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