The Invention of the known "Classic": Context, part 3: Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore

    The dome at the top of the Florence cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, holds one of the greatest architectural mysteries and engineering feats of all time. Built 600 years ago at the mind and hands of a goldsmith, Filippo Brunelleschi, who had no prior experience with architecture, the Florence cathedral should've been entirely impossible at the time of it's construction. The technology of the time didn't permit this type of construction and the technology needed for this enormous build simply didn't exist. 

    The structure of the dome curves inwards from eight walls to a single center point. Weighing at 40,000tons and overall standing at 170ft tall with a space of over half a football field from wall to wall, it is a mystery how it didn't cave in on itself at the time of it's construction. For smaller projects like this, builders would usually use a wooden stand that would hold the shape of the curving walls to support the structure until it's completion, preventing it from caving in during construction. However, the Florence cathedral dome was far too big to utilize such methods. The building of the dome was done completely free standing which should have been impossible. However, Brunelleschi came up with a way to make it happen and later joined the building committee in charge of the Florence cathedral. 

    Though his methods aren't entirely unknown, many things remain without answers. However, many, such as architecture and engineering professor, Massimo Ricci, have studied the dome and the possible ways it could have been built. Ricci has spent decades studying the dome and the historical evidence, or better said, lack there of, pertaining to the dome and has come up with what he believes is the methods Brunelleschi used to plan out the free standing construction of the dome. Ricci believes that the secrets to this successful build are the patterns in which the mortar was laid within the inner structure of the dome walls and a rope technique used with a flower pattern found drawn by a critic of Brunelleschi's, criticizing said flower technique he was using; also the only existing piece of written/drawn evidence of the dome from that time.

 

    Brunelleschi's pattern design had horizontal bricks be interrupted by others that were vertical. This meaning that the pattern completely disrupts any plane of weakness within the wall, preventing it from sheering and tumbling to the ground. Following with the flower pattern, the rope technique used on the build would consist of rope being tied to a eight-petal centralized flower pattern platform and using it to measure and control the height and angle of the bricks. This would provide symmetry within the eight walls and reveal the exact center in which the walls should meet as they curve inward. Ricci has been approximately 30 years trying to create a significantly smaller replica using these methods which he believed where the ones used in the actual structure's construction.

   The Florence cathedral lead the way into the renaissance with it's design and impossible engineering. To this say it continues to leave experts and general public alike in awe with its beauty and ingenious structure and design. Brunelleschi truly managed to create the impossible and, 600 years later, the structure still stands.