building concrete

Certain types had a profound generative or regenerative effect. In domestic architecture it lent itself to the high-rise tenement blocks with which Roman speculators sought to capitalize on an urban population explosion in the late second and first centuries: the eventual conversion of rubble wall-facing into standardized pyramidal blocks laid in regular diagonal courses (opus reticulatum) was part of the same trend, for its purpose was to streamline the building process. Concrete vaults were also readily adopted in the architecture of baths, being both damp-resistant and fire-proof. (Boardman, 1986)