The building materials of the pre-industrial age.
The stones. Physical and morphological characteristics. Production, supply and use of the stone: the quarries, moving, lifting, finishing the blocks.
The clay. Production, supply and use of the clay.
The production of bricks.
The traditional brick wall, the tools of the mason, the texture of the walls; the surface of the wall; the mortar joints.
The binders. The chalk. The lime stone; the production cycle of lime. Methods of production of the different types of mortar: binder , aggregates, water , fillers and hydraulic additives.
Plasterwork . The different types of plaster. Surface finishing. Plaster graffiti, “marmorino”, “scialbatura”.
The wood: physical and morphological characteristics of the material; wood compression and tension; fixed and mobile nodes. Production, supply and use of wood.
The traditional carpentry: floors and trusses.
The metals. Iron , steel , cast iron: production, supply and use.
The glass. Raw material. Production, supply and use of the glass.
The Roman masonry. The masonry structures in large and small blocks. Opus siliceum, opus quadratum and its manners Etruscan , Greek , Roman, opus africanum, opus craticium, opus incertum, opus quasi reticulatum, opus reticulatum, opus mixtum, opus spicatum; opus testaceum, opus vittatum. Outdoor and indoor flooring. opus sectile , opus spicatum , flooring traditional layers according to Vitruvius ( statumen, rudus and nucleus ), opus opus signinum, opus musivum (hints).
Vaulted structures: the historical genesis of the arch. The overhanging arch. The wedge arch; the opus caementicium arches and vaults.
Roman building techniques. Construction techniques of the Pantheon, from the foundations to the walls and the dome.
Construction techniques of the Middle Ages. The architect and the building yard in the Middle Ages. The wall system in the Middle Ages; vaulted systems with ribbed vaults and cross vaults. The buttress-flying buttress system.
Construction techniques of the Renaissance .
The building context in the early fifteenth century in Florence and the design of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. Brunelleschi’s program. Structure and geometry of the dome; construction materials; structural connections; inclined self-supporting rows, herringbone.
Static principles of masonry arches and domes: theory and practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.