Architects and Designers
Vitruvius
vih-TROO-vee-us
Also Known As Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
Roman Writer
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Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Roman architect and engineer of the first century BC, author of De architectura, the only complete treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity. His demand that building satisfy firmitas, utilitas and venustas, firmness, commodity and delight, and his account of the orders, governed European architectural thought from the Renaissance onward.
Facts
Defining ContributionDe architectura, the Ten Books on Architecture 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The milestone entity carried no link back to its own author; this closes that gap.
Alberti explicitly modelled De re aedificatoria on Vitruvius's De architectura, the only architectural treatise to survive from antiquity.
Vitruvius is the earliest surviving source to codify the orders' proportional rules, in De architectura Book IV.
Sources
1. Encyclopedia Britannica
2. The Ten Books on Architecture
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press, 1914
2. The Ten Books on Architecture
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press, 1914Associated With: De architectura Written, Book I, preface, dedication to Augustus
2. The Ten Books on Architecture
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press, 1914Associated With: The Classical Orders, Book IV, on the orders
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