CONSTRUCTIVE DISOBEDIENCE

In 1418, Filippo Brunelleschi won the competi tion to build the Florentine dome of Santa Maria del Fiore with a design that proposed the largest ever masonry dome without the need for a material-intensive framework. When asked how exactly he intended to execute his idea of the double-shell construction, he replied in his dispositivo at the start of construction: "because in masonry, practice teaches how to proceed"-"perché nel murare la pra tica insegna quello che s'ha a seguire"... Filippo Brunelleschi's dome just as the Tour d'Eiffel by engineers Koechlin and Sauvestre or Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome are examples of such experimentalism. Although they were not conceived as research projects, they are nevertheless epistemic objects: They embody knowledge that has been built. As prototypes, long-term experiments and in their physically-spatial presence, they become milestones of constructive progress. In view of urgent climate and resource challenges, it is now more than ever..

Primary location: Braunschweig