The Popular Architecture Works by Filippo Brunelleschi

Lily Lampah
3 min readNov 5, 2017

--

Florence Cathedral is a popular building in Italy. One of the popularity is because of the unique dome. Do you know that the dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi? If you are attracted to architecture and even want to be an architect, you should learn from this person.

Florence Cathedral

In his early career as an architect, Filippo Brunelleschi was following a rivalry to design the dome of Florence Cathedral. With the idea of putting an egg in a standing position on a marble surface as the main design, he won the competition and earned the commission. His design was used to build the dome. In the process, around four million bricks were used to construct the dome octagonal. Even, he was the inventor of a new hoisting machine which was used to build the dome.

Filippo Brunelleschi built World’s Biggest Dome

Hydraulic Machine and Ship

Actually, Filippo Brunelleschi is not only attracted to architecture but also in mathematics, engineering, and ancient monuments study. Besides designing the dome of Florence Cathedral, he created a hydraulic machine. Interestingly, he had an important role in Florence military especially when defended against Pisa and Sienna. His role in military was not stopped there yet. Lastra a Signa was also his famous work in which it was a village protecting route to Pisa. The other popular architecture work is a ship known as II Badalone. At that time, Florence had to transport marble and the River Arno was the only route and Brunelleschi gave its solution.

One Point Linear Perspective

He is also popular in painting history. In fact, he found a new perspective known as one point linear perspective and naturalistic style in Renaissance era. Florence seemed to have a hero because Filippo Brunelleschi also gave his skill in urban planning. The idea is by putting several specific buildings close to squares and street. The main purpose of this strategy is to increase the visibility maximally. It was the same case when he built a protecting wall in the south of Staggia village.

Chapel Pazzi Family

Brunelleschi was full of passion in architectural artworks. He did it in the rest of his live until he died. If you are curious about his last work in architectural design, just check his legendary design in Chapel of the Pazzi family. It is also considered as a popular historical building in Florence, Italy. Due to the greatness of the design, Chapel of the Pazzi family is known as one of masterpieces in Renaissance architecture. What makes this building unique is on its idea. At that time, Brunelleschi applied simple geometric forms, the square and circle. As the result, this building has rectangular and transept along with unique design of altar. While exploring the interior of the building, you can also see the common Renaissance decorative motifs such as tall, blank and round headed panels and also roundels at the top.

From the information above, it can be concluded that Filippo Brunelleschi is a master in his work. He is the father of Renaissance architecture. For those who really want to learn about architecture including Renaissance architecture need to learn more from Filippo Brunelleschi especially how he got such kind of brilliant idea. Do you want to know more about Filippo Brunelleschi? You can find out more about his facts on this page. I’m sure you will learn many new things after reading those facts.

--

--