Vaughan Hart is a leading architectural historian, and Professor Emeritus of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath. He served as head of department between 2008 and 2010. Biography Hart was born in Ireland in 1960 and spent part of his childhood in Hong Kong. He studied architecture at Bath and Cambridge Universities (Trinity Hall), where he was taught by Michael Brawne, Patrick Hodgkinson, Peter Smithson, Ted Happold and Dalibor Vesely. Smithson was his final year undergraduate tutor, and part of Hart's student project was exhibited in the 1986 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition where it won the RA Student Prize. Between 1985-86 he worked as an architectural assistant to Sir Colin St John Wilson on the British Library project in London, and one of his drawings of the entrance hall is now in the RIBA drawing's collection at the V&A in London. Hart then moved to Cambridge to teach in Wilson’s unit and study for a doctorate on Inigo Jones under Joseph Rykwert. Hart's thesis formed the basis for his first book, on the art and architecture of the Stuart Court, published by Routledge in 1994. Publications Hart's concerns lie in particular with the symbolic function of architecture, and with the sources and meaning of architectural forms. He has published widely in the field of architectural history, specialising in the Italian architectural treatises and in British architectural history of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He is the co-translator (with Peter Hicks) of the treatises of Sebastiano Serlio, funded by the Getty Grants Programme and The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and he has also translated the two guidebooks to Rome published by Andrea Palladio and the guidebook to Venice by Francesco Sansovino (2017). These works were all published by Yale University Press, and have in turn been translated into Chinese and Japanese. Hart's translation of these classic works formed part of a wider project initiated by Rykwert and Robert Tavernor through their translation of the treatise by Leon Battista Alberti. In addition, Hart's monographs include influential studies of the work of Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, all published by Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. The latter monograph was awarded the Best Book on British Art Prize of the American College Art Association in 2004. Exhibitions