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Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture,
by Indra Kagis McEwen.
In the author's second book (following
Socrates' Ancestor) she takes on the most famous
treatise on architecture, Vitruvius's De Architectura,
known as the Ten Books on Architecture. While that text
has been seen as a guide for creating architecture (moulding
details, column profiles, etc.), McEwen's interpretation
is quite different: Vitruvius wrote the ten scrolls for
the Emperor Augustus Caesar as a tool, if you will, with
which to spread the Roman Empire. In other words, it was
meant as a way to use architecture -- which included gnomics
and machines, in addition to buildings -- to aid in the
Imperial dominance of the rest of the world, an interpretation
with obvious parallels today. This is apparent in the title,
where the body she is referring to is a multiple body of
the text, architecture, Caesar, and empire.
The author asks in her conclusion,
"If the fundamental role of architecture is to make
humans at home in the world, Vitruvius's narrative raises
the question, in what world? And on whose terms?" She
doesn't have the answers, though her scholarly -- and sometimes
difficult -- book illuminates an historical text in an extremely
interesting and poignant way.
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