renaissance architecture essays

renaissance architecture essays What were the achievements of Renaissance architecture? The era known to us as the Renaissance began approximately around the beginning of the fifteenth century, in Florence. The philosophy behind the whole movement is one of rebirth or the re-establishing of ancient classical culture. Following the collapse of the Roman civilization much of Europe fell into decline, losing a great deal of information concerning that period. Therefore knowledge concerning the architecture of that age could only be acquired via the classical ruins that litter the Italian landscape; and through the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius. Thus one of the greatest (and most fundamental) achievements of the renaissance is the rediscovery of the basic elements of classical architectural design, especially those concerning construction. The results of this achievement can be seen in the construction of buildings such as Florence Cathedral. Begun in 1294, the Florentine people almost exceeded the limit of their abilities in their enthusiasm to build an impressively large Cathedral, and consequently could find no method to cover it. This problem was left unresolved for over a century before an architect by the name of Brunelleschi was able to find a solution. Filipo Brunelleschi was born in 1377 and is considered to be the greatest architect of the early renaissance and is credited with the development of Renaissance style with buildings such as the Foundling Hospital. In 1420 he was appointed along with fellow architect Ghiberti to construct a dome over Florence Cathedral. The main difficulty in this was that the opening was almost 140 feet in diameter and 180 feet off the ground, which made it impossible to build a framework strong enough to support a dome. In truth no tree would have been long enough to provide timbre to bridge the gap, or if there had it would have broken under its self-weight even bef...