Architecture, Design, Civil Engineering, and Urban Planning: Branches of the Same Tree

Abstract

Since time immemorial, the architectural profession has been a part of human history; one need only mention the Egyptian engineer Imhotep, the first known architect in history (Paolo, 2026). In Classical Greece, Pericles and Ictinus stand out; in Rome, Vitruvius (Vitruvius, 2023), who wrote *De Architectura*, the seminal treatise on architecture; and during the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci represents the very best of the polymaths, an expert in various fields of scientific knowledge and the arts, particularly in architecture and military engineering. With the Industrial Revolution, “The word ‘construction’ referred, by the end of the 18th century, to a range of technical applications: public and private buildings, streets, bridges, canals, earthworks, and urban infrastructure—such as aqueducts and sewer systems. It includes, more or less, any large-scale construction project in which the mechanical aspect is not predominant” (Benevolo, 2007: 21).