Renaissance algorithm meets augmented reality at Venice Biennale
When most visitors contemplate the magnificent domes of Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, they see a triumph of early Renaissance architecture and artistry. But Sigrid Adriaenssens, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, sees something more: an algorithm that holds the key to building techniques that can minimize waste and unlock beautiful new forms of architecture.
For Adriaenssens, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Florence dome is invisible to the naked eye. Behind the decorated veneer, the dome’s bricks are arranged in a special pattern that allowed builder Filippo Brunelleschi to construct his famous dome without external support. In 2020, Adriaenssens and her colleagues published a paper that revealed how Brunelleschi arranged these bricks to support the massive Florence dome all on their own. Now, she has resurrected this Renaissance algorithm to build an installation for the Venice architecture biennale exhibition, Time Space Existence, which blended classical mason techniques with modern technologies such as augmented reality. ...
But these masons have a technological advantage that Brunelleschi could have never dreamed of. They built the arch using a HoloLens, a commercial augmented reality system that shows them exactly how to place individual bricks during the building process. ...
Adriaenssens says the biennale project also has important philosophical implications for how we think about innovation. For example, Giuseppe Taramelli, one of the Italian masons working on the vaulted arch has historically found it difficult to recruit young apprentices, who often see the profession as boring and antiquated. “He wants to use this project to attract young people to masonry, which seems like a very old-fashioned career where nothing new is happening,” says Adriaenssens. “So now he’s making a movie about this project to show how exciting this field can be with new technologies.” ...
See the full story here: https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2023/06/07/renaissance-algorithm-meets-augmented-reality-venice-biennale
