Why roof tiles exist. I understand why we don’t have flat roofs, but why do we have hundreds of tiles that sort of overlap each other and can be pulled or blown off easily?
Why aren’t roofs like a giant tent, still A shaped but each side is just a big sheet of whatever weatherproof material we got?
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It’s hard to make a material waterproof. All it takes is a tiny hole and water can get in.
However, the neat part about roofs is that they mostly don’t need to be truly waterproof, as they are not submerged.
Instead, tiles or shingles can be used , which let rain and snow drip off of them. By layering them, you make sure there’s no way that water can go underneath them – since water doesn’t run uphill. Those Mediterranean terra cotta tile roofs don’t need to be impermeable to water, they are just layered so every tile drains water downhill to the next tile.
Up until the past century or so there weren’t that many truly waterproof roofing materials except for tar (which worked OK) or metal (very expensive and hard to produce large sheets by pre-industrial society)
Nowadays there are plenty of truly watertight plastic products that are affordable, but are not always super strong against mechanical damage (branches, hail, etc) so they are usually installed below a conventional shingle roof.
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