That's exactly what they said to Frank Lloyd Wright in 1937 when he designed the lily pad columns for the SC Johnson and Son's Wax building in Racine. The Building Department, under the advice of it's engineers required a test column to be built to demonstrate the capacity to carry 12 tons of load, certain that it would not. FLW loaded it with 60 tons (5x requirement) before it cracked.
It's a great story
https://www.pbs.org/flw/buildings/sc..._interior.html
Someone in this thread mentioned Fillipo Brunelleschi who was an even more extreme example of an architect way beyond the engineering knowledge of the time, even centuries afterwards. There isn't even a word to properly describe Brunelleschi's genius.