With the publication of Vitruvius: 10 Books on Architecture, a new translation of the "central work of architectural theory in the Western world," Thomas Howe hopes the work will "influence the course of humanist-based architecture and liberal arts education, just as it has so many times in the past." Howe wrote the commentary, did 143 pages of illustrations and assisted with the translation from the Latin.

"Written by a Roman architect at the time of the Emperor Augustus, it has been translated and illustrated many times since the early 16th century. It possesses a fascinating, but incomplete vision of the idea that architecture as a leading social profession ought to be based on the unity of all liberal and technical knowledge. As such, it has been a major influence on the development of liberal arts education from the Middle Ages onward," explains Howe.

"Over half the work does not actually deal with architecture, but with the whole range of Hellenistic high-tech and low-tech knowledge. Without understanding that vast background of knowledge, the work seems to make no sense, since so much of our basic assumptions of knowledge have changed. I found that when one does understand that background, suddenly this Roman architect seems to be living in an age strangely similar to our own cosmopolitan, dynamic, knowledge and technology-based age."

An architectural historian and design teacher, Howe teaches several studio courses in architectural design, including programmatic design, historical design and modern structures. He teaches architectural history and seminars in postmodern art, culture and theory. He also launched the art history major at Southwestern, as well as the minor in architecture and design - one of the first programs in the country, if not the first, to reintroduce regular training in historical design into a regular academic design program.

"My principal interest is the urgent search in modern-postmodern culture for a language of sufficient depth to be sufficiently expressive of meaning for culture to survive and thrive. Architectural form is merely the formal language which I am closest to, but the general history of technology and aesthetics, and the interface, form the overall field of my interest," he says.

"I expect my students to search for the forms of life and thought appropriate to the level of ambition and intensity with which they wish to engage life. I hope I can help them find and integrate the forms with which they are comfortable."

Howe holds a B.A. from Lawrence University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Aside from his work at Southwestern, he has co-directed two excavations - a Roman Villa in Britain and a structure on the Palatine Hill in Rome - and is field director and chief master planner for an archaeological park at the site of several large Roman villas at Castellammare di Stabia near Pompeii.

-Carrie Johnson '93