| Summary: | The construction of the metal framework of the former Paris's corn exchange building was a strategical issue for the city’s flour supply. This monument, also called the “Louvre of the people” by Napoleon himself, had to be lastingly protected. Erected at the dawn of the French industrial Revolution, this cupola foreshadows a century of iron architecture in Europe. Its yard (1808-1813) ushers pioneering collaborations and new professional practices in the art of building. The architect François-Joseph Bélanger and the controller François Brunet follow an original process, where the calculation become a tool to measure accurately the prefabricated parts of the structure. Together, they offer an innovating solution to cover the monument built by Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières in 1783 and to replace the wooden dome realized by Jacques-Guillaume Legrand and Jacques Molinos in 1783, destroyed by fire in 1802. Mention the different stages of the elaboration of this metallic dome, «accomplished with the accuracy of a clockwork», allow to define the complex realization of this architectural achievement.
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