Notes for Leonardo's Dome Architecture

The majority of [his series of designs for churches or ‘temples’] work ingenious variations on centralized plans- square, polygonal, round or in combination.

Centralised church designs were beloved of Renaissance theorists…but they were rarely commissioned on a large scale for reasons of liturgy and function.

He was fully conscious of the proportional and structural similarities between the ‘dome’ of the skull and his domed temples… [He also put forward] an analogy between a sound building and a healthy building.

The plans are all derived through a process of setting together a number of simple geometrical shapes in symmetrical patterns.

Leonardo’s compositional procedure is so systematized, and so close in spirit to some present-day ideas on computer-aided architectural design about ‘shape grammars’ and rule-based generative methods for plan layout…

Leonardo is be considered as a theoretician in architecture [even if his only direct influence was on the Santa Maria delle Grazie by his friend Bramante]

[The more we examine the Italian architecture of the Renaissance and its] complete expression of that perfect eurythmya, that rigorous equilibrium…, the stronger and clearer does the figure of Leonardo stand out.

It represents Leonardo’s concrete contribution to the architectural development of the Second Renaissance.

Do these summary expressions of Leonardo’s thought, which never took form in works fully studied and translated into reality, suffice to prove his influence on the development of architecture? We have no doubt of it. Leonardo is an architect potentially.

After Leonardo’s time, the development of the ideas of the central plan seems to be filled with a new spirit, directed to reappraisal of spatial values, which multiply and become stabilized and fused, dominated by the cupola, that Roman element par excellence.

Also there is a certain structure for the stability of domed roofs that he discussed with the use of geometric shapes.

Leonardo da Vinci : Hayward Gallery, London, 26 January to 16 April 1989. London : South Bank Centre, c1989

Leonardo da Vinci. [rev. ed. / edited by Emil Vollmer] New York : Reynal in association with William Morrow, [19-], 1938
"Originally published in Italy by the Instituto Geografico De Agostino just before the war, in conjunction with the famous exhibition of Leonardo’s work in 1938."