August 29, 2001
Konrad Switters

There is a well known story in architectural and art-historical circles about the Dome of the Florence Cathedral [known locally as Il Duomo] in Florence, Italy. It serves as a parable for the hope that men and women project into the future of their lives and the future of their communities; a hope as inextinguishable today as it was then, during a time period that is now referred to as the Renaissance.

As the story goes, the city of Florence had commissioned a new church to be built on the site of a much older church, Santa Reparata. In 1294, Arnolfo di Cambio was chosen as the architect for this new project, and laid the first stone on September 8, 1296 (Trachtenberg, 282). "Little was built and the project was continued only after 1357 on an enlarged plan by Francesco Talenti."(Trachtenberg, 282).

What is very telling about the community of Florence at this time, was that this enlarged plan, by Talenti, exacerbated an early design problem; a problem which was evident in the original proposal. The citizens of Florence, and their leaders, intentionally placed themselves in a quandary by approving a plan with an intentional flaw, an accepted flaw: the crossing for the dome was such a great span that the current technology did not allow the distance to be covered - the crossing of the nave and the transept would have no roof until technology caught up with the dreams of these optimistic citizens.

The church construction began, and for over 100 years a suitable solution was still not found. 100 years. Think of it. The construction project was begun in 1296, and by 1417 the builders and residents of Florence still had no solution to a problem created by their long dead grandparents. And yet their optimism was unwaning, and in 1420, "a technical solution proposed by Brunelleschi was approved."(Trachtenberg, 282). Filippo Brunelleschi designed a solution; a man born a lifetime [a century actually, 105 years to be exact] after the fateful decision had been made to put faith in the progress of knowledge, and its messianic potential.

The solution was a masterwork of ingenuity. Instead of one dome, Brunelleschi proposed two:

"It [the dome] is constructed with an inner and an outer octagonal shell of stone and brick. The two shells taper in thickness as they rise and terminate in an octagonal oculus that supports and is covered by a large decorative lantern. The shells are reinforced and connected vertically by a large stone rib in each of the octagon's eight corners. Horizontal reinforcements consisting of partially visible tension chains of stone and iron, and one wood, girdle the vault and contain the tensile forces within the dome." (Trachtenberg, 283)

Those lucky travelers who have had the good fortune to visit this magnificent Architectural and Engineering wonder will remember the great structural ribs in the air space between these two layers, in which there exists a sinuous path up to the top of the dome, to the most magnificent aerial view of the city available [save maybe for the view from the Piazza Michelangelo across the Arno]. The layered structure acts as a truss of sorts, and through this unique design, the dreams of 13th Century Florentines and their ancestors were answered.

This God-fearing community had faith, not only in their almighty creator, but also in his/her most ingenious and grandiose creation of all: the human mind. The dome represents their dream for technological salvation, made manifest through their creation of a structure devoted to the divine being to which they turned for their religious salvation.

When I read that the current administration's missile defense plan [a bipartisan effort I must note] was based on just the same hope for technological advances, I was reminded of the dreams of our 13th century brethren in Late Miedevil/Early Renaissance Florence. The statement below was reported by The New York Times, and made in response to accusations that "tumbling" missiles would be very hard to target with the kind of system the Pentagon has proposed [and is currently developing]:

The problem is so difficult, some critics say, that it threatens to defeat any foreseeable antimissile weapon. Pentagon officials dismiss such judgments as unfounded. Defense technology, they contend, is fast evolving toward a new level of maturity in which complex systems will eventually work together to defeat almost any threat. <link>

Certainly I am deeply saddened in the proposition that our salvation lies in technological advances rooted in the destructive power of humanity against its own kind. But this is not really the direction for this rant.

Instead of having certitude in our ability to comprehend that our revolting ability to pollute an entire planet is now scientifically established and that we are capable [or will be capable] of stemming global warming through immediate and concentrated action to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases like the rest of the industrial world has pledged to do, instead of having confidence in our ability to use stem cells [that would otherwise be destroyed after their "stem siblings" were chosen ahead of them for the chance to produce life] sensibly and systematically to make advancements in health care unavailable at present, and instead of paying down the national debt for the first time in more than a lifetime [choosing rather to give back "projected surplus" dollars to American citizens based on "fuzzy math" projections about our country's profitability], the inhumanity of our leaders leads them to propose a faith, reserved almost exclusively to the adoration of the creator [whether it be Allah, Buddha, Christ, Yahweh], in a military operation that some argue will be so backward-looking by the time it is actually made to work on constant velocity projectiles [which won't be coming from "rogue nations" - follow link above for the full New York Times article] that it will make the Pentium-4 1.5 Ghz processor look like the Basic Cartridge for an Atari 800.

We still dream like the Renaissance Florentines did, except they were in the midst of an intellectual revolution that would produce the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, Descartes, Chaucer, Galileo Galilei, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Nicholas Copernicus; and we're in the midst of a revolution in which our society values watching "The Fear Factor" and "Temptation Island" over watching a Shakespearean tragedy or a PBS special, reading Danielle Steel and Stephen King over Nietzsche and Plato, would rather eat McDonalds than any type of non-artery-clogging healthy food, has been convinced [by clever and persistent marketing] that it should drink Starbucks coffee for 4 dollars instead of the better coffee from the local diner for 99 cents, and a society which would rather sit numbly in front of the television instead of pursuing any investigation into the complexity of our human metaphysic.

Great minds may yet solve our missile defense problem, but do they [and our leaders and citizens] laugh when they read Shakespeare, blush when they confront Botticelli, or cry when they listen closely to a certain song by Harry Chapin?

Works Cited:

Trachtenberg, Marvin, and Isabella Hyman, eds. Architecture: From Prehistory to Post-Modernism. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1986.