The great dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Palazzo Medici, La Rotunda of the Villa Capra, St. Peter's Basilica.  For a period of nearly three centuries these iconic structures, and hundreds of others, were imagined and then constructed by a group of architect/builders whose work is still admired for its marriage of elegant and innovative engineering with the design principles of classical antiquity.  In this course we will examine the work of Brunelleschi, Alberti, Palladio, Michelozzo, da Vinci, Michelangelo and others as we attempt to determine the reasons for the enduring influence of the buildings they designed and the engineering principles they employed.  Students will also have the opportunity to build architectural models of these structures as well as working models of the machines that were used to build them.