Duomo De Florence Cathedral

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The structure focused upon in this essay is Duomo de Florence, Florence Cathedral. The Cathedral Church is situated in Florence, the capital city of the Tuscany region in Central Italy. A city famed in modern times for it’s art and medieval history, the Duomo provides a glimpse of the architectural history of the gothic style implemented during the early renaissance and some would argue is held accountable for a lot of the art famed from this time in Florence. The church itself is situated on the Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square in English), in the heart of what is regarded as the historic centre of Florence. This square also houses the Opera del Duomo Museum in which the art work from the construction of the cathedral and relating to are …show more content…

This form of construction was not possible for Brunelleschi as the amount of lumber around was not enough to form the scaffolding for the dome. Therefore Brunelleschi had to think of away to construct this monument in a way which would allow the dome to withstand itself trough construction. He therefore turned to the Pantheon in Rome for inspiration. The Ancient methods used to construct the Pantheon were not that of Medieval wooden scaffolding methods, instead they constructed 21 feet thick walls to with stand the pressure a dome produces which is generally downwards and outwards. These walls were thick enough to withstand the 142ft Roman concrete oculus without cracking the walls. The oculus however had been made lighter by incorporating lighter pumice stone and creating a honeycomb structure. This is thought to make the oculus 70-80% …show more content…

To go about producing this dome he consequently had to make the dome as light as possible. A almost hollow dome was produced with a double and parallel shell. This included a staircase within allowing for access to the top. Ribs were used for weight bearing and were added to the inner side of the dome. For everyone rib two inner, more minor ones supported the weight which was also reinforced by horizontal ribs locked into place to strengthen creating a skeleton for the dome to be built around. To add to this Brunelleschi created a counterweight to the structure adding chains to the inside. Made of wood and stone interlocked by iron, these chains countered the pressure the dome puts on the walls of the existing structure in turn reducing the downwards and outwards force.
Brunelleschi really showed his engineering prowess in the construction of the dome. As the scaffolding arose around the dome during construction he designed numerous pulleys and hoists to get the vast amount of materials to the top. Large amounts of stone and timber were hoisted upbeat only after travelling on a specially designed barge the Brunelleschi himself designed to aid the process of construction on the dome. The outer dome is laid with over 4 million bricks in a herringbone brick pattern, used to transfer weight

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