page_title: Room
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Room / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Here is a photograph taken from Lady Georgiana's Dressing Room inside Castle Howard. Located in York, Yorkshire, England, UK.
context_page_description: In a building, a room is any space enclosed within a number of walls to which entry is possible only by a door or other dividing structure that connects it either to a passageway, to another room, or to the outdoors, that is large enough for several persons to move about, and whose size, fixtures, furnishings, and sometimes placement within the building support the activity to be conducted in it.
context_section_description: Historically, the use of rooms dates at least to early Minoan cultures about 2200 BC, where excavations at Akrotiri on Santorini reveal clearly defined rooms within certain structures.
  In early structures, the different room types could be identified to include bedrooms, kitchens, bathing rooms, reception rooms, and other specialized uses. The aforementioned Akrotiri excavations reveal rooms sometimes built above other rooms connected by staircases, bathrooms with alabaster appliances such as washbasins, bathing tubs, and toilets, all connected to an elaborate twin plumbing systems of ceramic pipes for cold and hot water separately. Ancient Rome manifested very complex building forms with a variety of room types, including some of the earliest examples of rooms for indoor bathing. The Anasazi civilization also had an early complex development of room structures, probably the oldest in North America, while the Maya of Central America had very advanced room configurations as early as several hundred AD. By at least the early Han Dynasty in China (e.g. approximately 200 BC), comfort room complex multi-level building forms emerged, particularly for religious and public purposes; these designs featured many roomed structures and included vertical connections of rooms.
caption: Castle Howard, "Lady Georgianas' Dressing Room"
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5184", "Image ImageLength": "3456", "Image BitsPerSample": "[16, 16, 16]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:04:02 22:24:03", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "982", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7795", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/6", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:03:31 13:43:57", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:03:31 13:43:57", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "2584963/1000000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "4294967295", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "10", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5184", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3456", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5184000/907", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "691200/119", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "0380310463", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[10, 22, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM"}