The history of building

Currently, I am studying and researching for a class that I am teaching in Grand Rapids. A major focus of this class is the history of building, back to the earliest records of mankind. In this research, I am looking for similarities in construction and technology across the generations. Digging kind of deep, one would find that the Ancient Romans used several techniques that would be cutting edge even for our present times. For instance, the Ancient Romans used cavity walls, hypocausts, and even primitive forms of insulation back around the time of Jesus, give or take a few hundred years. Cavity walls are used presently in masonry and is basically an air space between the walls that make up the exterior shell of a dwelling. Hypocausts is a form of radiant heat, where channels were made in the floors and walls of homes, in which, hot air and smoke from a wood or coal burning furnace, would pass through these channels to heat the floor and walls of a home. Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire had the money and resources to use these techniques, but were not the first to use this technology.

Extensive research into this topic shows that the Ancient Romans used these cutting edge techniques because they learned of them from those who traveled to the remote areas of what they knew as their world. The first known use of a radiant heat design has been traced back to what is now Korea. Thousands of years before the wide spread use of hypocausts in Ancient Rome, ondols were used in houses through out what is now Korea and Southern Asia. Ondols are a series of pipes that run under floors in houses that had hot air and smoke from wood fired furnaces pushed through them to heat a home. Ondols are still used in Korea, Japan, and other areas of the world. Frank Lloyd Wright was shown this technology when he was working on a hotel in Japan. F L W, came up with an idea to run hot water through pipes instead of hot air or smoke. At this point, I am not prepared to call F L W the father of modern day hot water radiant heat systems, but it does warrant more research into the matter.\

Ancient Rome used many technologies that the Greeks were already using, including using doors. The greeks are credited with being the first recorded people to use doors on their homes. It is not known where most of this technology first originated. The cavity wall design has been traced back thousands of years before the use in Ancient Rome. A recent discovery in Syria of one of the oldest cities ever found, shows the use of cavity walls. Cavity walls in this area of the world were used to cool homes by passing cool air through the cavity between what made up the exterior walls of the home. This city is reported to be over 7,000 years old!

So, my research continues, as now I am fascinated with who or what is credited with these technologies that we are using thousands of years after they were first used. I am researching societies all over the globe, as the Aztec, Hopi, and several other tribes of the ancient world used techniques used still today. An example would be passive solar design and masonry.

This information will eventually be in a book that I am writing, so stay tuned if this stuff interests you......