Analysis Of The Pont-Du Gard Aqueducts

“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins,” this quote said by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, suggests that architecture is more than just attractiveness and beauty within a building; it is also a form of engineering and calculated skill. The Romans through the Pont du Gard aqueducts built in Nimes during 16 BCE prove this idea to be correct. The Romans did more than just “put two bricks together” in a tasteful way when constructing the aqueducts, they put the bricks and stones together attentively, with great muscle, and with the extraordinary capability to utilize engineering skills. The Romans’ engineering and architectural expertise influenced modern architects such as Mies Van der Rohe later on, but the

In order to provide fresh water for the people in the Roman cities that were growing and spreading rapidly, the Roman government decided the best plan of action would be to construct aqueducts, which would bring in water from mountain and spring sources. As stated in Gardner’s Art throughout the ages, “The Pont-du-Gard demonstrates the skill of Rome’s engineers. The aqueduct provided about 100 gallons of water a day for each inhabitant of Nimes from a source some 30 miles away.” One of the designing tactics that helped the Pont-du-Gard aqueducts to bring in that fresh tasting 100 gallons of H2O a day were the exquisitely constructed arches. Looking at Pont-du Gard, one can tell that the Romans were thinking of both artistic qualities along with the over-all operation of the

The siphons were the lead pipes that carried water through the interior of the structure, and while the siphons are not aesthetically pleasing like the great arches because they are hidden within the interior of the aqueduct, they were still an important part of the engineer work within the architecture. As Peter Aicher states in Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome, “the term siphon has been given to the sections of the aqueduct in which the water entered pipes that took water down one side of a valley and up the other to an elevation nearly equal to its starting point.” The arches helped with the way in which the water moved with gravity, but the siphons were the tubes that carried the water within the arches’ walls. It is evident that the Romans were attentive in the way that they fabricated the tubes used to transfer the H2O from the source into the cities. As written by A.Trevor Hodge in Siphons in Roman Aqueducts, “Roman lead pipes, which, round in theory, tended to assume an oval shape from the manner in which the pipe was formed (bending in a flat plate of lead around a wooden core and joining the two edges) and from the thick soldered seam running along the top.” This