Brunelleschi’s Dome

Posted by Matthew Bushey

Before the summer completely winds down, I want to offer a recommendation for one of the books from my summer reading list.  It was in part by chance that I picked up a copy of Ross King’s 2000 national bestseller Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture.  But it was also from a desire to expand my understanding of this pivotal structure after having studied it firsthand in Florence with the Syracuse University study abroad program, some 15 years ago.

 

If there was ever one place to be, at one moment in time, to witness the biggest technological and aesthetic breakthroughs in architecture, it has got to be Florence, Italy in the Renaissance years of the 15^th century.  The home of the greatest revolution in art and architecture, the Florentine Renaissance produced works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Dante. And towering above them all stood the Santa Maria Del Fiore, Florence’s central cathedral that was built to rival all others.  The dome that sits atop the cathedral was the widest ever built at the time, with a diameter of 143 feet, and the highest, topping out at 350 feet above street level.  It remained the largest such structure for almost 500 years and today remains as the largest brick-and-mortar dome in the world. 

The Opera del Duomo, the guild of wealthy Wool Merchants who were responsible for building and funding the cathedral, had selected a design for the cupola by Neri di Fioravanti.  Most gothic cathedrals of the time relied on flying buttresses – external structural supports that braced the outside of the basilica.  But Neri’s design did away with this external bracing that many in Italy considered ugly and burdensome.  Instead, the proposed design relied on a series of stone and iron chains embedded inside the double-skinned dome to prevent it from collapsing upon itself.  The result was a structure that seemed to rise majestically without any visible means of support.  This single aesthetic decision ushered in the Renaissance and marked the end to the Gothic age.

A concept model was in hand, but no one actually knew how to build it.  So a structural design competition was held in August 1418, and by the following month the project was granted to a goldsmith and clockmaker, Filippo Brunelleschi.  Soon named the Capomaestro of the project, or architect-in-chief, Brunelleschi solved the biggest technological challenges to the dome’s construction.  

An ingenious designer, engineer, and inventor, Brunelleschi came up with a number of supporting devices and concepts that were instrumental in the dome’s construction.  Facing the primary challenge of transporting 70 million tons of building materials and lifting them several hundred feet above the ground, he invented an ox-hoist that was assembled on the cathedral floor.  With his machine, one ox could raise a load of 1,000 pounds to a height of 200 feet in approximately thirteen minutes.

Brunelleschi also solved the problem of how to build the dome without wooden centering supports.  He is credited with inventing linear perspective, and he holds the first-ever patent for invention for a ship used to transport building materials up the river Arno, a precursor to today’s paddleboats.

Repeatedly subjected to public scrutiny, doubt, and even jailed by his enemies at one point, his career was marked by breakthroughs and setbacks.  He was engaged in a bitter rivalry with his lifelong competitor, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and was constantly entering competitions to prove his worth.  His final competition reward was for the lantern that tops the dome.  The cathedral was finally completed with the placing of the copper ball atop the lantern in 1496, over 80 years after the competition for the dome was called in 1413, and 200 years after construction had started on the main basilica.

Ross King’s book goes into intricate detail of the structural and engineering feats by Brunelleschi, but is nonetheless a compelling story of human dedication, political posturing, and rival competition during a time of plague and war.  The book instills a real appreciation for the Duomo - just as much an artistic achievement as it was a structural one – and for the Master Architect who made it all happen.

Hot off the Presses

The website over at truexcullins.com continues to evolve as we discover better ways to bring you information about our projects and people.

Recently we overhauled the Publications page to include article descriptions and links to each project.  The page includes publications that TruexCullins has been featured in over the years, including magazines, newpapers, books, and websites.

The new format makes it easier for you to find an article on a specific project, or to simply browse the magazine topics before reading the articles.  From each listing, you can open a PDF of the article or link to the website containing the online story.  For articles on specific projects, the project name is listed and you can link to the project page on the TruexCullins site.

We’ll continue to make tweaks to the website to improve navigation and make it easier for you to find the information you’re looking for.  If you have any suggestions, you can always drop us a line with your comments!

Roadside Architecture and Fried Seafood

Right now, we are all enjoying our summer in Vermont, otherwise known as “August”.  For these last few weeks of the season, we may find ourselves spending our days on the lake, or heading to the New England coast, boating, swimming, or simply sitting in the sand, watching the horizon.  Summer is the time for road trips, campgrounds, and country fairs.  It is casual and light-hearted.

Through all of this, I’ve been wondering: Is there an architectural structure that best epitomizes this summer state of mind?  Something that speaks to us on the more base level that we put ourselves in when the mercury rises, but is still consciously working to influence our built environment?

And then it hit me: while driving along Massachusetts route 133, through the town of Ipswich on our way to Crane Beach, we passed this local landmark and popular tourist spot:

The Clam Box is known to serve up the best fried clams this side of the North Shore.  There is always a long line out the door, as there was when we drove by. (No doubt, I figured, these people are drawn to the architecture.)

The sides of the building fold back at the top, forming an open box that looks just like the to-go container you use to carry out your clams.  But this architectural folly is rendered in the same wood shingles that face every other beachfront structure on the coast, so it’s actually sympathetic to the local vernacular.

The Clam Box is a duck.

A duck is a building that does not adorn itself with applied symbols, but rather distorts itself to become the symbol.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour coined the term in their 1972 landmark book Learning from Las Vegas, updated in 1977 with “Part II: Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed”.

By studying the buildings along the 1970s Las Vegas Strip, they described the two predominant ways of incorporating signage and iconography in buildings:  the duck and the decorated shed.  The ‘duck’ label was a literal reference to the Long Island Duckling, but it was in more general terms applied to any structure that was a symbol of itself (or something else).

Venturi and company actually wrote of ducks with a fair amount of disdain, and threw the term around in a rather derogatory way.  (No surprise, in their architectural practice, their designs fell more into the ‘decorated shed’ category.)  Spoiler Alert: the conclusion of Learning from Las Vegas is a pretty clear criticism of this approach:

When Modern architects righteously abandoned ornament on buildings, they unconsciously designed buildings that were ornament.  In promoting Space and Articulation over symbolism and ornament, they distorted the whole building into a duck.  They substituted for the innocent and inexpensive practice of applied decoration on a conventional shed the rather cynical and expensive distortion of program and structure to promote a duck; minimegastructures are mostly ducks.  It is now time to reevaluate the once-horrifying statement of John Ruskin that architecture is the decoration of construction, but we should append the warning of Pugin: It is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration.

Las Vegas has come a long way in the 35+ years since we were first Learning.  There have been countless reinventions and seemingly endless growth spurts.  Last summer, I picked out the Aria hotel in Las Vegas as one of my Top Five and said this about its character:

Aria’s most notable feature is the fact that it represents a radical departure from the themed approach of Las Vegas’ recent past.  Instead of reconstructed Italian piazzas or Egyptian tombs, the architecture of Aria is firmly based on unadorned modernism.  This is its strategy for achieving authenticity: it is not trying to be anything that it’s not.

The Clam Box is doing the same thing.  It is not representing something outside of itself.  It is representing itself.  The building is the sign and the sign is the product: the box of clams.

Next time I’m back, I’ll order the special.

Heritage Flight in 360 Degrees

As beautiful as a photo can be, it can only capture one view.  To fully experience an architectural space, you have to BE there. 

Until now.

New Spin 360 is a young start-up company with Vermont roots that has quickly grown to serve clients nationwide.  They produce interactive 360 degree photos of interior and exterior spaces that are the closest thing to being there.  These are actually more than 360 degree photos, because the view extends in all directions: not only can you pan from left to right, but you can look completely up and down, and … well ... all around. The effect is that you can see everything possible as if you were standing in the space.

The concept is simple, and the interface is simple, but it opens up a whole new way to show off the spaces we design.  So we were very excited to see that Heritage Aviation was recently photographed by the folks at New Spin 360.

Heritage Aviation is, of course, the recently completed LEED-Gold private aviation facility at Burlington International Airport.  If you haven’t been there in person, you can now see what it is like to stand in the middle of the hangar, with a fleet of private jets surrounding you.  Be sure to look up to see all the skylights that flood the space with natural light, sitting above the open steel webs of the original structure, all painted white to maximize reflectance and minimize the need for electric lighting.

Other views are available as well.  You can take a look from out on the runway, looking back toward the hangar doors.  Or step up to the rooftop patio and look out across the runway.  Pan to the right and you’ll see the green roof with its colorful vegetation.  Now look up over the top of the hangar and you’ll see the white roof used for maximum solar reflectance, with the top of the wind turbine visible from the other side of the site.

Another one of our projects that has been captured by New Spin 360 is the Tram Haus Lodge at Jay Peak.  Jay commissioned a big photo shoot that included all of their new buildings, including these guestrooms that we had the pleasure of working on last year. To step inside, go to this site and click on “Lodging & Spa”.

Want to see more?  Check out InsideChurchStMarketplace.com for a New Spin on the summer action at the Church Street Marketplace in downtown Burlington.