Trip to Pompeii

While in Italy, we spent one day in Pompeii with a tour guide exploring the ruins of the city.  The city was buried in 9 ft of volcanic ash and debris in 79 AD after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which towered over the city.  The explosion of the eruption was equivalent to 50 atomic bombs being detonated simultaneously.  Most of the people in the city at the time were buried alive or died of suffocation from the toxic gases that polluted the air.  In one of the pictures above you can see a body that was preserved by the ash.  You can still see their facial expressions as well.  From first look, you can tell that this was a gruesome death.  The bodies themselves decayed within the ash, but a cast of the body's details wash imprinted in the ash.  Archaeologists discovered that the could preserve the entire body by injected plaster into the cavity left by the body in the ground.  They could then raise the entire mold with the skeleton inside and untouched.  Closer analysis could late be done using x-ray machines.  

Another interesting concept from an architectural standpoint is how the people of Pompeii created their columns.  Many of the columns were created using mostly brick masonry and were later finished with mortar to make them smooth and fluted to maintain the various orders of columns from that era.  This is very similar to our stucco techniques today.

Theatre of Marcellus

Here is the exterior of the theater of Marcellus.  In the close up, you can see the structure is mainly solid stone.  You will also notice square holes all over the facade.  These holes were made to allow for scaffolding to be erected while the workers were constructing the exterior wall.  These holes would have eventually been covered up by the marble tiles that we associate with the monumental buildings throughout Rome.  The marble tiles would be set in place with a small gap behind them and they would get backfilled with mortar to create a tight bond.  During this process, they would also be leveling and checking the plumb of the tile while it was curing--quite a difficult process.  Bigger holes were also created, but much later after the construction was complete.  This were made by people trying to remove any of the metal clamps that were used with the stone walls.  Iron at the time was a very valuable material and would often be stolen from the sites, even during initial construction.

The Roman Colloseum

Here are a couple of pictures from inside the Collosuem.  It is hard to imagine how the Romans could ever have built something so massive using only stone, concrete, and their own muscle.  Seating around 50,000, the Colloseum is very comparable to a modern day sports stadium.  They even made use of solar shading to reduce glare inside the arena.  Built up from Nero's dried lake bed, the structure consists of over 100,000 cubic meters of stone.  The open spans in the interior corridors were made possible with the innovation of the arch.  The arch transfers it's loads down to the two made supports on both sides and also pushes out slightly.  The continuous ellipse of the Colloseum allows the arches on the exterior to brace themselves.  After an earthquake brought down a section of the exterior wall many centuries ago, however, the arches started to loose their integrity.  They fixed this by installing flying buttresses on the exterior to keep any more arches from blowing out.

The Roman Baths

The Roman Baths.  Here is a small sample of what made up the floor inside the Roman Baths.  You can get a sense of the intricacy and attention to detail that they put into all of the architectural features throughout.  This particular floor is a marble mosaic made from small tiles about the size of a dime.  Truly amazing!

Trevi Fountain

This site is very popular and was pretty close to our hotel in Rome.  You could usually find hundreds of people at any given point of the day walking around and shopping in this square.  What a site!  It's even more dramatic at night.

Trip to Rome Reflection

I had a great time in Rome seeing everything that we have learned about throughout the quarter and more.  I also really enjoyed getting to know everyone better, both the students and professors.  This was an experience I'll never forget.  Even though I took several pictures along with everyone else, I don't think it can replace the experience of actually being there and seeing it for yourself.  I can tell friends and family all about the Vatican, the museums, the art, but it will never truly sink in until you've been there. 

I was inspired but the Roman's ability to build structures to the scale that they did using only the basic building materials and technologies.  The roman civilization definitely left their mark in the world for their innovations in engineering and design.  It is important to remember that not everyone Rome benefitted from the lavish luxuries that we associate with Rome.  But just to have a system of clean running water for all to benefit from was pretty amazing.  I'm almost certain that the quality of life was much greater than other establishments around the world at the time simply due to the water and sewer systems that they utilized.

The food was great too.  I learned that tomatoes were not actually part of the Italians original diet and that traditionally, you don't eat meat with your pasta dish during a meal--the is an American-influenced tradition.

I don't know much Italian, but in some cases, I was able to get away with Spanish.  However, that made the locals think that I was from a Spanish country.  In the tourists areas though, it seemed like there was someone who spoke enough english to get a point across.  I also discovered that you could find much more affordable meals away from the main attractions.  One of my favorite dishes was the grilled calamari that I had at one of the restaurants in Rome.  It was almost an entire leg of squid sliced open, slightly crispy.  Once you get over the fact that you're eating a dead sea creature, it's very tasty.  The night out at the dinner with the dean was definitely the best meal I had on the whole trip.  Overall, hanging out with new people outside of my major was fun and exploring through an ancient city was also an experience in itself.

Final Presentation - PBL 2 - The Pantheon Controversy

We have just completed our last class of the quarter before the trip to Rome.  I was very pleased with our second PBL results.  We had several ideas for this assignment and narrowed it down to a video presentation.  Our group decided to do a skit where we would act as people with clashing ideals and we would meet in a closed-door conference to discuss the future use of the Pantheon.  The result was a combination of live and pre-recorded interactions between the people.  The recorded portion can be viewed on the side.

I was extremely satisfied with our presentation this time around.  Our group had several great ideas every step of the way.  We wanted our presentation to meet the goals of the problem, but make it entertaining as well to keep the audience engaged.  We threw a little commercial break in there too to mix it up a little bit.  But overall, I had a lot of fun doing this and I think we all learned that we could be creative through open discussion of ideas and putting our skills together.