More than a mil­len­ni­um and a half after its fall, we still look back with won­der on the accom­plish­ments of the ancient Roman Empire. Few ele­ments of its lega­cy impress us as much as its built envi­ron­ment — or in any case, what’s left of its built envi­ron­ment. Still, the fact that any­thing remains at all of the struc­tures built by the Romans tells us that they were doing some­thing right: specif­i­cal­ly, they were doing con­crete right. Just how they made that aston­ish­ing­ly durable build­ing mate­r­i­al has been a sub­ject of research even in recent years, and we even fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture back in 2017. But could we make Roman con­crete today?

Such is the task of Shawn Kel­ly, host of the Youtube chan­nel Cor­po­ral’s Cor­ner, in the video above. Using mate­ri­als like vol­canic ash, pumice and lime­stone, he makes a brick that looks more than sol­id enough to go up against any mod­ern con­crete.

As of this writ­ing, this sim­ple video has racked up more than three mil­lion views, a num­ber that reflects our endur­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the ques­tion of how the ancient Romans cre­at­ed their world — as well as the ques­tion addressed in the high­er-tech Prac­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing video below, “Was Roman Con­crete Bet­ter?”

The fact of the mat­ter is that, despite pos­sess­ing tech­nolo­gies the Romans could hard­ly have imag­ined, their con­crete lasts longer than ours. Why that should be the case comes down, in large part, to water: we put a great deal more of it into our con­crete than the Romans did, in order to pour it more cheap­ly and eas­i­ly. But this makes it more frag­ile and sub­ject to dete­ri­o­ra­tion over time (as seen in the ear­ly dilap­i­da­tion of cer­tain Bru­tal­ist build­ings), even despite our use of chem­i­cal addi­tives and steel rein­force­ment. Roman con­crete was also mixed with sea­wa­ter, which caused the for­ma­tion of crys­tals with­in the mate­r­i­al that actu­al­ly strength­ened it as it aged — thus cement­ing, as one wag in the com­ments puts it, the Romans’ place in his­to­ry.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Trav­el Today

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Rare indeed is the ancient-his­to­ry buff who has nev­er dreamed of walk­ing the roads of the Roman Empire. But unlike many long­ings stoked by inter­est in the dis­tant past, that one can actu­al­ly be ful­filled. As explained in the video above from Youtube chan­nel Intrigued Mind, a fair few Roman roads remain in exis­tence today, albeit only in sec­tions, and most­ly ruined ones at that. “Like oth­er incred­i­ble mon­u­ments that still stand, as if to prove the pow­er of the Roman Empire, there are a sur­pris­ing num­ber of Roman roads still in use today,” some con­vert­ed into mod­ern high­ways, but “many still paved with their orig­i­nal cob­ble­stones.”

Of all such roads, none has more impor­tance than the Via Appia, or Appi­an Way, whose con­struc­tion began back in 312 BC. “The first long road out­side of the greater city of Rome that was­n’t Etr­uscan,” it “allowed Romans to make their first major con­quest” and begin their mighty empire’s “con­quest of the world.” With­out under­stand­ing the sto­ried Via Appia, none of us can tru­ly under­stand Roman his­to­ry. But to grasp the con­text of the Roman Empire, we can hard­ly ignore the even old­er roads like the Via Domi­tia, which was “the road Han­ni­bal used to invade Italy, 100 years before the Romans claimed it” — not to men­tion an impor­tant set­ting in the Greek myth of Her­a­cles.

You can still cross one of the Via Domi­ti­a’s bridges, the Pont Julien in the south of France. In that same coun­try stand the more-or-less intact Pont Fla­vian, orig­i­nal­ly built along the Via Julia Augus­ta, and the Pont du Gard, the most famous and ele­gant Roman aque­duct of them all. Nor should enthu­si­asts of Roman infra­struc­ture miss the Alcan­tara Bridge in Spain, the Man­fred Bridge in Ger­many, or the ruins of Tra­jan’s Bridge — made into ruins delib­er­ate­ly, by Tra­jan’s suc­ces­sor Hadri­an — in Roma­nia. The most seri­ous among them will also want to go as far as the Mid­dle East and trav­el the Via Maris, which con­nect­ed Egypt to Syr­ia, and the remains of the bridge across Cae­sar’s Dam in Iran.

Iran belonged, of course, not to the Roman Empire but the Per­sian one. But “leg­end has it that the Per­sian emper­or cap­tured the Roman emper­or and forced him to use his army to build the dam and the beau­ti­ful bridge to cross it.” All was fair, it seems, in the expan­sion and con­flict of ancient empires, and the ruins scat­tered across their vast for­mer ter­ri­to­ries tes­ti­fy to that. Though much less tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced than, say, mod­ern free­way sys­tems, the Roman roads that sur­vive have proven sur­pris­ing­ly robust, a phe­nom­e­non exam­ined in the video just above by his­to­ry Youtu­ber Told in Stone — a Chicagoan, inci­den­tal­ly, who acknowl­edges that the Via Appia has nev­er had to take a Windy City win­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Tran­sit Map: a Close Look at the Sub­way-Style Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana of the 5th-Cen­tu­ry Roman Empire

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Frank Lloyd Wright, who drew so much inspi­ra­tion from the wide open spaces of mid­dle Amer­i­ca, designed just two high-rise build­ings. The sec­ond, com­plet­ed late in his long career, was 1956’s Price Tow­er in Bartlesville, Okla­homa. The first opened six years before that, as an addi­tion to one of his already-famous projects. That was the head­quar­ters of S. C. John­son & Son, bet­ter known as John­son Wax, in Racine, Wis­con­sin. Seen at a dis­tance, the Research Tow­er stands out as the sig­nal fea­ture of the com­plex, but it’s the ear­li­er Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing that offered the world a glimpse of the future of work.

The Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing’s con­struc­tion fin­ished in 1939. Back then, says Vox’s Phil Edwards (him­self an estab­lished Wright fan) in the video above, “offices were small and cramped, or pri­vate. This build­ing had a spa­cious cen­tral room instead, meant to encour­age the spread of ideas.” Such a con­cept may sound famil­iar — per­haps all too famil­iar — to any­one who’s ever worked in what we now call an “open-plan office.” But it was dar­ing at the time, and it seems that no archi­tect has ever imple­ment­ed it quite as strik­ing­ly again. What oth­er office makes you “feel like you’re under­wa­ter, that you’re in, maybe, a lily pond”?

That descrip­tion comes from archi­tect and Wright schol­ar Jonathan Lip­man, one of the experts Edwards con­sults on his own pil­grim­age to John­son Wax Head­quar­ters. He want­ed to spend some time work­ing there him­self, some­thing eas­i­ly arranged since S. C. John­son has by now moved most of its oper­a­tions into oth­er facil­i­ties. But how­ev­er sat­is­fy­ing it feels to sit in the shade of Wright’s “den­dri­form columns” sprout­ing through­out the Great Work­room, the expe­ri­ence proves unsat­is­fy­ing. “It was­n’t a real thing with­out any peo­ple around,” Edwards says, “with­out the ener­gy of being in that office.”

Wright spoke of his inten­tions to cre­ate “as inspir­ing a place to work in as any cathe­dral ever was to wor­ship in.” Today, amid the silent absence of typ­ists on the ground floor and man­agers on the mez­za­nine, the Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing must feel holi­er than ever. The space exudes a mag­nif­i­cent lone­li­ness, and open­ing a Mac­Book to log into Slack sure­ly inten­si­fies the lone­li­ness rather than the mag­nif­i­cence. “In 1939, this was the future of work,” Edwards says. “These big cor­po­rate cam­pus­es, the Googles and Metas and Ama­zons: they owe a debt to this cam­pus here.” But for the increas­ing­ly many liv­ing the remote-work life, even those twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry big-tech head­quar­ters have begun to seem like tem­ples from a pass­ing era.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The World Trade Cen­ter was not at first a beloved work of archi­tec­ture, but over time it set­tled into its place on the New York sky­line, gain­ing wide accep­tance as an icon of the city. Its destruc­tion on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 great­ly inten­si­fied that sym­bol­ic pow­er, espe­cial­ly as expressed by the image of Minoru Yamasak­i’s Twin Tow­ers. But as long­time New York­ers (or at least long­time Low­er Man­hat­tan­ites) remem­ber, the WTC con­sist­ed of more than a pair of sky­scrap­ers. Dat­ing from Amer­i­ca’s era of “urban renew­al,” with its ambi­tions of build­ing cities with­in cities, it also incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al short­er office build­ings, a hotel, and an under­ground shop­ping mall.

In oth­er words, the WTC was a com­plex — which also hap­pens to be just the adjec­tive to describe the prop­er­ty-rights sit­u­a­tion in the wake of its dev­as­ta­tion. Talk of the imper­a­tive to rebuild began very soon indeed after Sep­tem­ber 11, but orga­niz­ing a rise from the ash­es was, pre­dictably, eas­i­er said than done. As explained in “How the World Trade Cen­ter Was Rebuilt,” the video essay above from Youtube chan­nel Neo, the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey first had to re-acquire the leas­es from all the dif­fer­ent major ten­ants involved. And then there was the task of nego­ti­at­ing with Lar­ry Sil­ver­stein.

Hav­ing devel­oped the orig­i­nal 7 World Trade Cen­ter build­ing in 1980, Sil­ver­stein long had his eye on the whole she­bang. He final­ly man­aged to sign a 99-year lease-pur­chase agree­ment on the com­plex on July 24, 2001 — sure­ly one of this cen­tu­ry’s sig­nal cas­es of bad tim­ing. But he did jump into the task of rebuild­ing as soon as pos­si­ble, com­plet­ing the new 7 World Trade Cen­ter just five years lat­er. Accord­ing to the sto­ry told in the video, it would hard­ly be an exag­ger­a­tion to char­ac­ter­ize the project of rede­vel­op­ing the WTC site as a grudge match between Sil­ver­stein and the Port Author­i­ty, with their duel­ing visions of the prop­er way to fill that high­ly-charged space.

That project con­tin­ues still today, just over two decades after the ter­ror­ist attacks that brought the Twin Tow­ers down. David Childs’ 1776-foot-tall “twist­ing glass mono­lith” One World Trade Cen­ter opened in 2014, but the much-delayed Ronald O. Perel­man Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter at the World Trade Cen­ter is still under con­struc­tion, as is the new 2 World Trade Cen­ter. With its recent com­ple­tion, San­ti­a­go Cala­trava’s St. Nicholas Greek Ortho­dox Church joins his exist­ing World Trade Cen­ter Trans­porta­tion Hub. Topped by a struc­ture called the Ocu­lus, designed (if not flaw­less­ly) to open to the sky once a year on Sep­tem­ber 11, that strik­ing tran­sit com­plex also includes an expan­sive West­field shop­ping mall: a jux­ta­po­si­tion of mem­o­ry and com­merce with pow­er of its own as a sym­bol of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

Watch a Time­lapse Video Show­ing the Cre­ation of New York City’s Sky­line: 1500 to Present

When The Who Saved New York City After 9/11: Watch Their Cathar­tic Madi­son Square Gar­den Set (Octo­ber 20, 2001)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

On many of my trips to Japan I’ve stayed at the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka, which is exact­ly where and what it sounds like. To any for­eign­er the place would be an intrigu­ing nov­el­ty, but to those inter­est­ed in Japan­ese archi­tec­ture it also has great his­tor­i­cal val­ue. Designed by archi­tect Kurokawa Kisho, the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka opened in 1979 as the world’s first cap­sule hotel, a form of lodg­ing now wide­ly regard­ed as no less quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese than the ryokan. At that point Kurokawa had already been advanc­ing cap­sule as an archi­tec­tur­al unit for years, con­tribut­ing a “cap­sule house” and cap­sule-based cor­po­rate pavil­ions to the Osa­ka World Expo 1970, and even build­ing a curi­ous mas­ter­work of the genre in Toky­o’s Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er.

The oth­er archi­tects involved in Expo ’70 includ­ed Tange Ken­zo, Kawa­zoe Noboru, Maki Fumi­hiko, Kiku­take Kiy­onori, and Isoza­ki Ara­ta — all asso­ci­at­ed to one degree or anoth­er with Metab­o­lism, an archi­tec­tur­al move­ment inspired by the rapid eco­nom­ic growth, enor­mous urban expan­sion, and unprece­dent­ed tech­no­log­i­cal change then trans­form­ing post­war Japan. The Metabolists “approached the city as a liv­ing organ­ism con­sist­ing of ele­ments with dif­fer­ent meta­bol­ic cycles,” writes Lin Zhongjie in Ken­zo Tange and the Metabolist Move­ment: Urban Utopias of Mod­ern Japan. “To accom­mo­date a city’s growth and regen­er­a­tion, Metabolists advanced trans­formable tech­nolo­gies based on pre­fab­ri­cat­ed com­po­nents and the replace­ment of obso­lete parts accord­ing to vary­ing life cycles.”

When it opened in 1972, the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er did so as the first ful­ly real­ized Metabolist project. Abroad in Japan host Chris Broad intro­duces it as “not only my favorite build­ing in all of Tokyo, but in all of Japan.” He also con­tex­tu­al­izes it with­in a brief his­to­ry of Metab­o­lism, as well as of the post­war Japan­ese soci­ety that fired up its prac­ti­tion­ers’ aes­thet­i­cal­ly brazen, tech­no-Utopi­an ideals. Geared to the work-dom­i­nat­ed, peri­patet­ic lifestyle of what Kurokawa called “homo movens,” the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er actu­al­ly con­sist­ed of two con­crete cores onto which were bolt­ed 140 cap­sules (archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rist Charles Jencks likened their aspect to “super­im­posed wash­ing machines”), each a self-con­tained liv­ing space replete with cut­ting-edge ameni­ties up to and includ­ing a bath­tub ash­tray Sony reel-to-reel tape play­er.

Kurokawa envi­sioned the cap­sules being replaced every 25 years over a life­time of cen­turies. Alas, the dif­fi­cul­ty of such an oper­a­tion meant that the orig­i­nals were sim­ply left in, and by the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry many had bad­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed. “Iron­i­cal­ly,” writes Lin, “Tokyo is grow­ing and trans­form­ing itself so rapid­ly that it even out­paces the ‘metab­o­lism’ that the Metabolists envi­sioned, and requires renewals on the scale of entire build­ings instead of indi­vid­ual cap­sules.” First announced in 2007, the year of Kurokawa’s death, the build­ing’s demo­li­tion began this past April, and it has occa­sioned such trib­utes as Stu­dio Ito’s ele­giac ani­ma­tion just above. The Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er stood for half a cen­tu­ry, long out­liv­ing Metab­o­lism itself, but its cap­sules will now scat­ter across the world, sug­gest­ing that there was some­thing to the bio­log­i­cal metaphor all along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.