Why read Brunelleschi's Dome?

Book cover of Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Book description

This work tells the story of the largest masonry dome ever built, describing the tremendous labour, technical ingenuity and bitter personal strife involved in its creation. Initially regarded as impossible to build, the construction of the dome, for the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, became the greatest…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Brunelleschi's Dome as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Witold Rybczynski

Author

Buildings are a product of the artistic imagination and building technology, but they also depend on political will and cultural capital. Ross King, a skillful storyteller, describes how all these played a role in the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in fifteenth-century Florence. Its maker, the great Filippo Brunelleschi, was the first architect in the modern sense, and in many ways the story of Western architecture begins here.

From Witold's list on architecture for non-architects.