Roman Aqueducts: Synthesis of Form and Function
Rome’s aqueducts have long been a subject of debate over what constitutes architecture and what amounts to engineering. Howard Crosby Butler’s article on aqueducts as monuments examines the nature of architecture itself. Butler writes that “architecture is distinctively the ‘art of design’ or of composition, and the term may be applied to structures which, though they may have no claim to beauty of detail, give evidencethat their builders had a care for appearances, andan effect of dignity”1 While aqueduct design may indeed belong in the category of form versus function, there are those who have insisted that Rome’ ...
