I cannot believe that I am on a Summer vacation in Florence, Italy with my family this very moment and we have just gazed upon this crown jewel of Italy several times.
Sheesh, cheers to Brunelleschi's brilliance. It was inspiring to hear about - particularly at the end. He might've aimed to emulate and pay homage, but wound up surpassing. Love the inventiveness.
Interesting that you didn't really talk about the building as art so much as an engineering feat. Either way I'm glad to find some good architecture content, hope there's more to come!
The Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence, Italy is the largest brick dome in the world. The dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and was begun in 1296 and structurally completed in 1436. The technique used to build this masterpiece o has not been achieved. The explanations provided by speakers Beth Harris and Steven Zucker are very informative and detailed. Thanks.
the dome itself was built from 1420 to 1436, the fun thing is they started to build the cathedral in 1296 not knowing how they will build the dome as they had no idea how to do it, so it stood for a century without the dome, with a hole
Irini. Fabulous tour once more. This was on my list for my next trip and even though I have enjoyed this I will still have the tour with you for real when this pandemic allows travel once again. Thank you. Stay safe Janet
You need to build a dome, but... 1) Gothic cathedral method of wooden framework is too expensive and nearly impossible 2) you don't have Roman concrete to do it like Pantheon Brunelleschi - I have the answer
Extraordinary structure. Good luck getting official approval to built similar in today's legal and social climate. The only contemporary comparable is Burning Man.
It is not exactly correct to compare a dome with a vertical flat arch as the latter cannot protrude out and need support. Brunelleschi realised that the dome is a horizontal arch in the form of an ever decreasing circle and each layer of bricks at the circumference was in fact an ever decreasing complete arch wich is trying to fall upon itself towards the centre where he circumference goes into compression. What Brunelleschi saw was that the most important was to ensure that the horizontal circumference at each stage would not distort and in fact it had to e a circular beamand as it went higher the top circles were in compression while the lower ones slowly went into tension. Brunelleschi saw to it that the structure accounted for all that was required. Basically each pont on tha dome is held by what one could call the triangle of forces where one force is falling towards the centre and the other equal forces are circumferential from both sides of the point in question, every point is in fact held by a tripod! effect.
