Brunelleschi engineered the self-supporting dome of the Florence cathedral.
For more than 500 years, Filippo Brunelleschi's construction of the Florentine Duomo has been regarded as an engineering marvel, demonstrating historic methods that still provide useful information for contemporary engineering. It has remained a mystery up until now how the master goldsmith and sculptor managed to create the masterpiece that exceeds the capabilities of even the most advanced building techniques, as well as how the masters who came after Brunelleschi continued the legacy. Researchers from Princeton University and the University of Bergamo unveiled the engineering methods behind self-supporting masonry domes typical of the Italian Renaissance in a combined paper published in the July 2020 issue of Engineering Structures.
Researchers looked at how self-supporting cupolas, like the well-known duomo at Florence's Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, were constructed without the usual shoring or forms.
#SPJ4
