Book Review
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King
When it was first published in 2000, ‘Brunelleschi’s Dome’ became New York Times best seller and has received several literary awards. This is an interesting book for engineers, architects and any layman who enjoys reading narratives about history, design, innovators, and innovation.
For more than 100 years, the biggest cathedral of Florence had a huge hole in its roof, hurting the honour of the Florentines. Until he appeared, Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi was able to build the most colossal dome in Europe, which still dominates the landscape of Florence from any point of view in the city.
In this short and beautifully researched book, the author Ross King presents the genius of Filippo Brunelleschi in a lucid, engaging, and lively manner replete with history, drawings, and images. The book is essentially a work of non-fiction and describes the construction of the largest brick dome of Santa Maria Del Fiore (Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower), in Florence , Italy. The cathedral's dome is about 115 meters (372 ft) in height and 45 meters (147 ft) in width.
The first chapter in the book starts with this beguiling announcement:
“ ON AUGUST 19, 1418, a competition was announced in Florence, where the city’s magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, had been under construction for more than a century:
The author explains “ Two hundred florins was a good deal of money — more than a skilled craftsman could earn in two years of work — and so the competition attracted the attention of carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers from all across Tuscany. They had six weeks to build their models, draw their designs, or simply make suggestions how the dome of the cathedral might be built. Their proposals were intended to solve a variety of problems, including how a temporary wooden support network could be constructed to hold the dome’s masonry in place, and how sandstone and marble blocks each weighing several tons might be raised to its top.”
These starting paragraphs certainly heightens curiosity and excitement to read this delightful book. The author describes the history of Florence, the various famous architecture, culture, politics, brinkmanship, drama, and life during the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of Renaissance period. He introduces us to Filippo Brunelleschi, a goldsmith and clock maker and how over sixteen years, Brunelleschi would dedicate himself to designing and constructing the marvelous dome. The author reveals various facets of Brunelleschi personality - intelligent, problem solver, innovator, adventurous, researcher, knowledgeable, confident, ambitious, competitive, authoritative , conceited, master of illusions, generous and yet being poor at his own personal finance management.
Brunelleschi died in 1446, kept the secrets of its construction until death and hence for over 500 years the construction of this engineering marvel has been an intriguing mystery and subject of many architectural and engineering research. The book compels readers to imagine the various challenges of 15th century and succinctly presents Brunelleschi’s designs and innovations of construction, clocks, hoists and lifting machines which were very far ahead of time.
Interestingly domes were built during Mauryan Empire and became more popular as Stupas in 3rd century as part of Buddhist architecture built by Emperor Ashoka. Domes are also commonly seen in Islamic Structures. Apparently, there are structural ( technical) and architectural differences between Stupas and Domes. While stupas are solid and semi-spherical , Domes are hollow and must withstand lateral forces and thrust all around.
Brunelleschi's major innovation was to build the Dome without centering ( wooden formwork) a supporting structure. The Dome consists of two distinct domes: one internal, more than two meters thick, with a deeper angle than the other and consisting of large arches held together by ribs and made of bricks arranged in a "herringbone" pattern. In building this dome, Brunelleschi reinvented the field of architecture. Brunelleschi is also the inventor of Perspective Drawing widely used in Architecture and Civil Engineering.
While reading the book I found the long Italian names little taxing but after few pages you get used to it. Although the book is not technical, I suspect readers without engineering background might find few of the technical stuff little irritating but eventually will get the drift and enjoy the authors delightful narration. It will certainly benefit if you read the book and watch the various YouTube videos featuring the construction of dome, just to visualize and fathom the enormity of challenge in the Dome’s design and construction.
The book is comprehensive and not to be missed. There is no doubt that towards the end readers will learn about architecture, engineering, innovation and agree with the author that “ Architectural marvels like Filippo’s dome often become sites of scientific inquiry because their unique structures and dimensions can serve as testing grounds for new theories and technologies.”
Having read the book, I yearn to visit Florence and climb up to the top of this magnificent Dome.
No comments:
Post a Comment