From Vitruvius to Gaudí: two thousand years, one question

My journey did not begin with three separate interests. I encountered Gaudí before Vitruvius, through my 1991 thesis. Seeking to understand the relationship between the tree, structure and space, I traced nature as an archetype of architecture and, from there, ancient thought. That is how Vitruvius entered my work: not as a distant author, but as the origin of a question that Gaudí had made contemporary once more.

In the years that followed, digital drawing, surveying and three-dimensional models helped me turn that question into a research method. The first model of the Basilica of Fano dates to the early 1990s; today, more than thirty years later, new archaeological evidence asks us to return to that text and those hypotheses with more powerful tools and even greater responsibility.

Technology does not interrupt history: it weaves it together. In doing so, it makes us ask what idea of humanity we want to carry into the future.

Vitruvius, a symphony through history

This is not only research on the Basilica of Fano. At its centre is Vitruvius: a figure who gathered and systematised knowledge, connecting architecture, nature, the human body, water, astronomy and machines. In De architectura, I recognise a root of our civilisation: a way of thinking in which disciplines meet and knowledge seeks a human measure.

I like to imagine his legacy as a symphony running through the centuries. Performers, instruments and questions change, but certain themes return: proportion, our relationship with nature, the responsibility of building, the place of technology in human life. Encounters with Vitruvius’ thought, from the Renaissance to Leonardo and beyond, belong to this long history of reinterpretation. In my research, the encounter with Gaudí reopens that thread too.

The Basilica of Fano now makes this legacy tangible. Words meet stone, and the author acquires a new presence in the public imagination. For me, the discovery is a key to reading Vitruvius anew, not the limit of his significance. I want to take him beyond specialist circles and return him to public discussion: the rigour of philologists and scholars must become the foundation of a story concerning us all.

Two beginnings, the same question

Vitruvius writes in the age of Augustus, as Rome shapes a new political, urban and cultural order. Gaudí works between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Industrial Revolution, iron, machines and new production systems usher in another world. Almost two thousand years separate them, yet both face a changing civilisation and the need to redefine architecture’s role.

In my reading, they share above all the same spirit. For them, nature is not an ornamental repertoire to copy. It is a principle to understand: measure, balance, materials, growth, the distribution of forces. Originality lies not in inventing arbitrary forms, but in returning to origins and recognising the profound laws that make life possible.

Humanity within nature

The question, then, is the one we still ask today: what is humanity’s place within nature? How can we inhabit what does not belong to us without reducing it to an object, backdrop or resource? Architecture arises precisely at this threshold. It does more than separate people from the natural world: it builds a relationship between body, materials, environment and community.

This is why the tree is much more than a formal resemblance. It embodies a structure that grows, supports, branches and seeks light. From Vitruvius to Gaudí, the passage from nature to architecture is not imitation: it is interpretation. It is the human attempt to learn from what existed before us and will continue to exist after us.

Machines must return to human purposes

Machines run through this story too. Vitruvius devotes the tenth book of De architectura to them, recognising that building also means extending the body’s capabilities through devices, energy and knowledge. Gaudí, at the threshold of the industrial world, uses models, calculation, experimentation and construction techniques without allowing the machine to become architecture’s purpose.

A machine does not belong to a person in the same way as their body, memory or language. It is a constructed extension. For that very reason, it is not neutral: each age must choose how to direct it towards human purposes. In the two thousand years separating Vitruvius and Gaudí, technology has become ever more powerful, yet has continued to need measure, intention and responsibility.

Technology weaves history together

Today, artificial intelligence opens a new passage. It can connect texts, images, surveys, models and archives; make scattered knowledge searchable through questions; restore a voice to places and people; and help us compare hypotheses that once remained separate. In this sense, technology weaves history together and brings it to life in the present.

But weaving together does not mean freely inventing what is missing. It means declaring sources, making uncertainties visible and distinguishing documents from interpretation. Artificial intelligence must not replace heritage, scholars or responsibility for decisions. It must help us ask better questions and share more widely what we have understood.

Heritage for everyone, beauty we can share

Understanding heritage cannot be a privilege reserved for those with the tools to decipher it. A work, a landscape or an archaeological trace truly becomes a shared resource when people can encounter it, understand it and recognise it as part of their own lives. Belonging to everyone must also mean being accessible to everyone.

Digitisation has already opened possibilities once unimaginable: bringing distant places closer, exploring details, making archives available and revealing relationships the eye alone cannot see. Artificial intelligence can go further: enabling everyone to ask their own questions, find understandable words, move across languages and build paths close to their interests and needs.

This possibility does not realise itself. It requires reliable sources, attention to people’s different abilities and tools designed for inclusion. This is precisely the mission of my work: democratising heritage, turning knowledge into shared beauty, making technology a means of participating in culture rather than simply observing it.

Why this website

Social media is valuable for sparking curiosity and creating communities, but content moves quickly and risks disappearing. This website gives it a more stable home: preserving posts, exploring themes, publishing original articles, organising images and documents, and connecting outreach to scientific publications.

It does not seek to duplicate MAINDH_LAB’s work, to which I will continue to refer readers for laboratory projects and activities. Here I want to build a more personal space: a place where research can become a public story and where Vitruvius, Gaudí and artificial intelligence can finally be read as parts of the same history.

One perspective

There remain three paths, because each has its own sources, images and questions. But the perspective is one. It is the perspective of someone who believes that knowing the past does not mean guarding motionless ruins, and that designing the future does not mean forgetting what came before us.

If Vitruvius and Gaudí still speak to us, it is because their question remains ours: how can humanity inhabit the world without forgetting that it does not own it? Today, we must ask machines the same question. The future will depend not only on what artificial intelligence can do, but on the idea of humanity we place at its centre and our ability to share what we know. Heritage for everyone, beauty that connects us: this is where this website begins.