CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Masonry Construction
Building with stone, brick or block laid in courses, where thick walls, arches, vaults and domes carry loads in compression.
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Masonry works by compression: stones or bricks press on one another, and openings must be spanned with lintels, arches or vaults. Builders learned to reduce the mass. Filippo Brunelleschi raised the brick dome of Florence Cathedral (1420–36) without full timber centring, and Michelozzo gave the Palazzo Medici in Florence rustication that grows smoother storey by storey. Christopher Wren hid a brick cone inside the dome of St Paul's Cathedral in London to carry its stone lantern.
Iron later entered the story as a hidden partner. Jacques-Germain Soufflot reinforced the stonework of the Panthéon in Paris with iron bars, Karl Friedrich Schinkel built his Bauakademie in Berlin in red brick, and Charles Garnier wrapped the Paris Opéra's iron frame in lavish stone. Richard Upjohn's Trinity Church in New York (1846) revived Gothic in brownstone. Look at the coursing, the bond of bricks, the joints and how arches gather weight.