A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces above a room, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are mostly utilized to conceal floor and roof construction. They have been special places for decoration from the earliest periods: either by painting the plain surface, in featuring the structural members of roof or floor, or by commandeering it as a field for an allover pattern of relief.
Only a little is proved of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were intricate with relief and painting, as is found at the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. During the Gothic period, the common design to employ structural areas decoratively then came to the creation of the beamed ceiling, for which sizeable cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being richly chamfered and molded and commonly painted in bright colours.
During the Renaissance, ceiling design was moved to its highest point of individuality and differentiation. Three forms were further elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the delicate design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far emulated their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers were designed, with their edges delicately carved and the field of each coffer flourished with a rosette. The second form consisted of ceilings entirely or mostly vaulted, mostly with arched intersections, with painted bands foregrounding 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 prime example of this. During the Baroque period, fantastic figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also utilized to decorate ceilings of this kind. The Pitti Palace in Florence and many French ceilings in the Louis XIV style illustrate this. In the third form, which was especially coined of Venice, the ceiling became a sizeable framed painting, 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 a distance underneath 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. The large part of suspended ceilings have a lightweight metal grid suspended from the structure by wires or rods to hold plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.
Other architects, emphasizing the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, take enjoyment in revealing the mechanical and electrical equipment. In response to this desire, some structural systems have been put in place that have an expressive power in themselves and make desirable ceilings.
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Tags: ceiling cleaning, roof space cleaningMay 4th, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments