the brain is not satisfied with randomness. as a species we seek meaning. so when corona flares up unexpectedly in a cruise ship in the pacific, a secret congregation in korea, on the slopes of the italian alps, or lower floors of your office building... you try to to think things happen for a reason. we try to tell coherent stories like some dude ate a sick bat, had his cells hijacked by a single stranded RNA virus, went to a 40,000 family annual dinner in wuhan, coughed on some people who would eventually go to a cruise, a church gathering in korea, ski slopes and work office in nyc.
in the renaissance, those suffering from the black plague were inclined to wonder if they were being punished by god to divine whether there was a mysterious plan intended lesson for suffering? their stories were biblical. so when brunelleschi and ghiberti cast their bronze competition entries of abraham's sacrifice of isaac, they were meant to show surrender to god. have faith in god, be ready to sacrifice your only son, and he will spare you from the black plague. when brunelleschi lost out to ghiberti in the baptistry door competition, he went to rome seeking the stories from the stones of rome that could help him construct the dome for the duomo.
In 1402, Rome was a shadow of its former glory. At its height, Rome was a bustling center of nearly 1 million people. Now, ruins like the theater of Pompey and the mausoleum of augustus were being plundered, and their stone was quarried for Westminster Abbey. The great Forum was now known as ‘Il vaccino campo’, or field of cows.
Brunelleschi arrived in Rome with young sculptor Donatello. Donatello was as fiery tempered as Brunelleschi and they made a good match. At 15 years old, Donatello had struck a German in the head with a stick and found trouble with the law. if he wasn’t paid in full for a sculpture, he would destroy it on the spot. Many years later, he would go to Ferrara to try to murder one of his runaway apprentices.
Brunelleschi and Donatello lived like bums and didn’t care how they dressed or where they slept. They were completely focused on decoding the ruins. Brunelleschi and Donatello would hire laborers to cart rubble away from ancient sites. The locals figured they were digging for treasure. In actuality they were unlocking the secrets of Roman construction. For example, Brunelleschi would detail how the Corinthian, ionic and Doric orders differed mathematically. For Corinthian entablature height was 1/4 of its column height which in turn was 10 times its diameter. Brunelleschi became intrigued with the the possibilities of large span dome construction and its applicability to the duomo problem in Florence. After the great fire of Rome in 64 AD, Nero had implemented new fire codes mandating the use of inflammable building materials. As a result, the use of concrete (whose technology was lost in the Middle Ages) was used extensively to span large spaces. Nero’s own house, Domus Aurea, (64 AD) had a 35’ dome span over octagonal room with lavish piping that sprayed perfume down on Nero’s Guests. The Pantheon (118-128 AD) was the largest dome structure in the world standing 143’ high and 142’ wide.
Brunelleschi would write his findings down on parchment in cryptic symbols and Arabic code. Without patent protection or intellectual property laws, scientists have had a long history of ciphers. When Robert Hooke discovered the laws of elasticity, he wrote CEIIINOSSTUU which unscrambled forms ‘ut tensio sic vis’ which translates to ‘as the elongation, so the force’. When galileo discovered saturn’s rings in the 1600s he sent the following transmission to Kepler : SMAISMRMILMEPOETALEUMIBUNENUGTTAUIRAS which was supposed to be unscrambled to ‘observum altissimum planetam tergeminim (I have observed the most distant of planets to have a triple form) Kepler humorously unscrambled the message wrong to read ‘salve umbistineum geminatum martia paroles (hail twin companionship, children of mars). That mars has 2 moons would be proved correct centuries later though. (Emorfosenots anagram = stones of Rome)
Looking deep into the pantheon, Brunelleschi discovered the fundamental parameters for dome construction. First, masonry is very strong in compression. The spires of the churches of Koln and Salisbury, and the pyramids of giza were able to span up to 500’ vertically without issue. In fact stone can be stacked 2 miles high before crushing failure. If however stone was arrayed in a dome arrangement, the weight of the stone at the top would impose hoop stresses, or forces at the base that would tend to push the base outward. Imagine a ball pressed on top... the pressure would force the equator to bulge out. Stone has relatively little tensile stress, so to contain these hoop stresses, the romans made the base of the dome 23’ thick. To lighten the load, the Romans tapered the dome as it ascended towards the oculus. Towards the top, the dome is only 2 feet thick and composed of lightweight pumice and amphorae (empty bottles used for olive oil). The coffering on the interior also helped to diminish the load at the base. Despite the Roman engineering, lightning shaped cracks from the top to the base must’ve been noticed by Brunelleschi. For his duomo solution, Brunelleschi was careful to counteract hoop stresses he witnessed. Without concrete technology available to him, his solution would have to rely on the specific geometric placement of material and introduction of rings to rein in hoop stresses.
At the same time that Donatello and Brunelleschi were conducting their excavations in Rome, other Roman scholars were unearthing lost treasures like cicero’s Orator, and the poems of Lucretius, tabullus, and catullus. There was a movement in the early 1400s by artists, architects, philosophers and writers to learn from the past to in order to advance their understanding of the world. ‘Man became the measure of all things’, and in the Renaissance, Rome would become the primary portal to ancient knowledge. Architects like Leon battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, and Michelangelo would follow Brunelleschi’s trailblazing footsteps and find inspiration in the ruins. In the modern age, Louis Kahn and corbusier would sift through the same stones and find ancient inspiration for their modern architecture.
Brunelleschi and Donatello lived like bums and didn’t care how they dressed or where they slept. They were completely focused on decoding the ruins. Brunelleschi and Donatello would hire laborers to cart rubble away from ancient sites. The locals figured they were digging for treasure. In actuality they were unlocking the secrets of Roman construction. For example, Brunelleschi would detail how the Corinthian, ionic and Doric orders differed mathematically. For Corinthian entablature height was 1/4 of its column height which in turn was 10 times its diameter. Brunelleschi became intrigued with the the possibilities of large span dome construction and its applicability to the duomo problem in Florence. After the great fire of Rome in 64 AD, Nero had implemented new fire codes mandating the use of inflammable building materials. As a result, the use of concrete (whose technology was lost in the Middle Ages) was used extensively to span large spaces. Nero’s own house, Domus Aurea, (64 AD) had a 35’ dome span over octagonal room with lavish piping that sprayed perfume down on Nero’s Guests. The Pantheon (118-128 AD) was the largest dome structure in the world standing 143’ high and 142’ wide.
Brunelleschi would write his findings down on parchment in cryptic symbols and Arabic code. Without patent protection or intellectual property laws, scientists have had a long history of ciphers. When Robert Hooke discovered the laws of elasticity, he wrote CEIIINOSSTUU which unscrambled forms ‘ut tensio sic vis’ which translates to ‘as the elongation, so the force’. When galileo discovered saturn’s rings in the 1600s he sent the following transmission to Kepler : SMAISMRMILMEPOETALEUMIBUNENUGTTAUIRAS which was supposed to be unscrambled to ‘observum altissimum planetam tergeminim (I have observed the most distant of planets to have a triple form) Kepler humorously unscrambled the message wrong to read ‘salve umbistineum geminatum martia paroles (hail twin companionship, children of mars). That mars has 2 moons would be proved correct centuries later though. (Emorfosenots anagram = stones of Rome)
Looking deep into the pantheon, Brunelleschi discovered the fundamental parameters for dome construction. First, masonry is very strong in compression. The spires of the churches of Koln and Salisbury, and the pyramids of giza were able to span up to 500’ vertically without issue. In fact stone can be stacked 2 miles high before crushing failure. If however stone was arrayed in a dome arrangement, the weight of the stone at the top would impose hoop stresses, or forces at the base that would tend to push the base outward. Imagine a ball pressed on top... the pressure would force the equator to bulge out. Stone has relatively little tensile stress, so to contain these hoop stresses, the romans made the base of the dome 23’ thick. To lighten the load, the Romans tapered the dome as it ascended towards the oculus. Towards the top, the dome is only 2 feet thick and composed of lightweight pumice and amphorae (empty bottles used for olive oil). The coffering on the interior also helped to diminish the load at the base. Despite the Roman engineering, lightning shaped cracks from the top to the base must’ve been noticed by Brunelleschi. For his duomo solution, Brunelleschi was careful to counteract hoop stresses he witnessed. Without concrete technology available to him, his solution would have to rely on the specific geometric placement of material and introduction of rings to rein in hoop stresses.
At the same time that Donatello and Brunelleschi were conducting their excavations in Rome, other Roman scholars were unearthing lost treasures like cicero’s Orator, and the poems of Lucretius, tabullus, and catullus. There was a movement in the early 1400s by artists, architects, philosophers and writers to learn from the past to in order to advance their understanding of the world. ‘Man became the measure of all things’, and in the Renaissance, Rome would become the primary portal to ancient knowledge. Architects like Leon battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio, and Michelangelo would follow Brunelleschi’s trailblazing footsteps and find inspiration in the ruins. In the modern age, Louis Kahn and corbusier would sift through the same stones and find ancient inspiration for their modern architecture.
square #1 - corona plant rubbing: purple crayon
corona subway scene
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