Architecture & X Design & Engineering

The territorial tensions among the professions that originated from architecture, such as planning, design (urban, landscape, interior, product, etc), and engineering is another issue. Today the term “architecture” does not refer to the term “architecture” used by Vitruvius. He describes all these fields as branches of architecture in his Ten Books on Architecture (V. Pollo, Morgan, 1960). From Vitruvius until today, as a consequence of specialization, all fields of engineering, planning, and most design fields (product, interior, landscape) were gradually extracted from the field of architecture. Today, architecture is narrowed down to building design. I’m afraid this continuing process will narrow this definition even further within the building design field. These developments created a biased look and tendency bending the term of architecture to create a distinction between architecture and those fields that are liberated (!) from it. For me it is almost impossible to discuss any of these fields regardless of the others; though this might be defined as a romantic Leonardo Syndrome…