Warehouses. This was a, this was a commercial port. We talked about the fact that in commercial ports, one needs warehouses. We talked, we, we began the semester with a warehouse. In fact, the Porticus Aemilia in Rome, along the banks of the Tiber. And I remind you of that here. Here's the Tiber, a model of the Tiber with the Porticus Aemilia. You'll remember that was made out of concrete, it was one of the earliest examples of concrete construction in the Republic, in Rome. A series of barrel vaults linked to one another on three tiers, as you'll recall, with axial and lateral spatial relations inside that structure. Ostia needed its own warehouses as well. It had them in the republic already, but it began to add to them in the second century AD. And it's fascinating to see what happens when you build a warehouse out of concrete faced with brick. You get an extraordinary structure that looks very much like an insula. I mean, if I put this up and said, what is this, and you said, it's an insula, you would, you know, you would, you would be sort of be on the mark because it looks exactly like an insula, but it is a warehouse. And this is the most famous warehouse in Ostia, the so-called Horrea, is the word horrea, horrea is warehouse in Latin. The Horrea Epagathiana, which you have on your monument list which dates to 145 to 150 AD. This is the entrance to the Horrea Epagathiana. It is, again, made out of concrete, faced with brick, exposed brickwork, brickwork enjoyed in its own right, for its own aesthetic here. We can see that, that it is like the like the apartment houses in that it is multistoried with the large entrance ways or entrance ways into the structure down below and then the smaller windows up above. They have monumentalized the entrance, the main entrance to the structure by giving it, columns supporting a pediment. Very grand in fact. And, and we haven't, we ,we, it's interesting to see that even, with this brick face concrete architecture, the Romans have not lost their interest in Hellenizing works of art. And using touches of ancient Greece to monumentalize, and to make more, more you know more, more cultured in a sense the entrance way into this structure. So we see these columns, engage columns, supporting a pediment above, capitals on those columns as you can see here. All of this done in concrete faced with brick. And you can see here, this is a, an outstanding example of the way in which they have used brick to their advantage. They have recognized that you can bury the color. You can have a reddish brick, you can have a yellowish brick. So, here they've used red brick to face the column shaft. And then a yellow brick to for the capital. So, there's a distinction, between the shaft and the capital. And they have even used the most expensive material, a marble for the inscription plaque where they identified this building as the Horrea Epagathiana and then the pediment above. And you can see, if you look at the pediment decoration and if you look at the volutes of the capitals, you will see they have used a small amount of stucco. To enable them to ha, to create the vol, the spirals of the volutes, for example, and some of the more delicate decorative work in the pediment above. Another subtlety, another nice subtlety, just shows you the amount of effort and time and money that went into this commission. Also this very nice pilaster that is placed right next to the column which makes a wonderful, a wonderful transition from the column. The roundness of the column to the squareness of the pilaster to the shape of the doorway. The esthetics very much on the mind of this particular designer. As well as the vistas again. This idea of looking through one space, seeing another opening and wondering where that opening is going. All of that very, very carefully designed by the architect. Here's another view head on of this elaborate doorway leading into the Horrea Epagathiana, announcing with the inscription exactly where you are and what this building was used for in antiquity. A detail of the pediment where we can see the inscription. We can also see the capitals, the use of stucco work here and the very elaborate work that they have done to decorate the pediment above. Just a few more details of the columns where you can see even better this capital and the way in which they have used brick. They have used brick for the, even for the acanthus leaves. You can see that there are acanthus leaves here. This is actually an example, one of the few we've seen, of the composite capital. With the encanthus leaves of the corinthian and the volutes of the ionic, we was it on the arch of Titus in Rome. But here we see that they've used brick and then only at the upper most part where the leaf has to curve over do they add the stucco. So, tremendous, and this is just a warehouse and yet a tremendous amount of effort has gone into making it an extraordinarily beautiful building. And it shows again that they are absolutely going over the top in terms of their being enamored of what they can do with brick facing that they are now able to expose. Once they can expose it, they're much more willing to put the effort into it to make it really attractive. And if you go into the courtyard of the Horrea Epagathiana. And by the way behind, within these areas here we have annular bulging you can see these niches that have been place here, I mean they don't really need these niches in this courtyard of this warehouse. What did they use these niches for? Well perhaps they put little statuettes of, of gods that those who worked here favored and protected their, their daily their daily toil here in the Horrea Epagathiana. But look at the attention that they've paid to these niches that have no other purpose than to be attractive, and possibly again to hold these statuettes. But you can see here again with this combination of stucco work for the pilasters and the capitals and brick work. Brick work creating these interestingly shaped lozenges and triangles to create shows an interest, again, in geometric form and the contrast of one geometric form to another, just as we saw in black and white mosaic capitalized on by these designers.
