Baumaterialien als Mittel zum (konstruktiven) Zweck und Ausdruck? Römischer Beton als Fallstudie

Building programmes allowed the Roman Empire to quickly achieve a physical Roman reality in newly conquered territories. The session on Building Materials and this contribution on Roman concrete in particular, investigate building materials on the frontier as the blocks that created these architectural realities. The contributions are interested in the people who selected, created and used these elements of construction. As the study of Roman concrete shows, this method was particularly popular in a military context. Advantages and disadvantages of the new building method taken together suggest that its speed of construction allowed cementing monumentality and permanence without the need for a specialised workforce. These factors accelerated the development of a new understanding of constructions. The carefully placed building element was replaced by a malleable mass that allowed new forms of architectural expression.