ABSTRACT
This chapter picks up the period from the close of the ecclesiastical building boom (c.1350 coinciding with the Black Death plague) to the close of the 16th Century. The Renaissance arrives in Western Europe centering on the Northern Italian city states. To examine its influence on design and construction the primary focus is on building in Florence, drawing on Richard Goldthwaite's book The Building of Renaissance Florence . The chapter follows the basic analytic framework tracing funding for construction from the profits of trading, the emergence of architectural talent abetted by the reinstatement of perspective in design, the continued use of stone and wood as the main materials, but with a continuation of most of the practices described in Chapter 3. Sidebars cover the construction of Brunelleschi's cathedral dome, notes on Leon Battista Alberti, who was the first person since Vitruvius to write about architecture, an outline of the Florentine guild system and the story of Pietro del'Abacco, a Renaissance period estimator/mathematician.
