Why Leonardo da Vinci Still Matters to Architects?

Leonardo da Vinci self-portrait. Da Vinci’s interdisciplinary approach connected art, anatomy, engineering, and architectural thinking.

The term interdisciplinary has become a common expression in contemporary architectural discourse. The reason is straightforward: architecture is not a profession that can develop through a single field of knowledge alone. Meaningful architecture often emerges from the convergence of different disciplines, modes of thinking, and ways of observing the world.

In fact, this idea is far from new. When we look at The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius, one of the earliest architectural treatises written nearly two thousand years ago, we find that the architect is not described merely as a builder. Instead, Vitruvius portrays the architect as a person equipped with knowledge of history, geometry, and a wide range of other fields. From its very beginning, architecture was defined as a way of thinking that transcends the boundaries of a single discipline.

Geometric and structural drawings made for Vitruvius’s De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture). Source: DEA / ICAS94 / De Agostini via Getty Images

Contemporary architecture offers powerful examples of this approach. In the work of Santiago Calatrava, sculpture, watercolor painting, and engineering merge into a single design language. His structural audacity and formal expression emerge not only from architectural knowledge itself but from a mindset nourished by multiple disciplines. Architecture, in this sense, becomes an expanding field of production shaped by external sources of knowledge.

This phenomenon is not unique to architecture. Original ideas often emerge at the intersection of different disciplines. Even the history of computer science demonstrates this principle. In the nineteenth century, George Boole was working in logic and philosophy, attempting to express true and false propositions through mathematical symbols. His work had nothing to do with electronics; it was an attempt to understand how human reasoning operates. Nearly eighty years later, Claude Shannon, then an electrical engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, realized that this logical system could be directly applied to electrical circuits. A relay could be either open or closed, just as a proposition could be true or false. In his 1937 master’s thesis, Shannon applied Boolean algebra to relay circuits, creating the first direct bridge between logic and electronics. The binary system and logical circuits that form the foundation of today’s digital world are largely based on this insight. The important point is that this breakthrough emerged neither from electronics alone nor from logic alone. Innovation arose from the meeting point of two different disciplines.

Claude Shannon’s breakthrough came not from electronics alone, but from recognizing that the logic of true and false could be physically represented through electrical circuits.

It is precisely for this reason that Leonardo da Vinci remains such a powerful figure for architects today. Da Vinci was not simply a person interested in many subjects; he consciously combined different fields of knowledge to create entirely new forms of production.

An early example can be found in a shield he designed as a young man. Commissioned to create an image capable of terrifying opponents in battle, Da Vinci chose not to exaggerate a single animal. Instead, he combined parts from different creatures: the claw of a scorpion, the head of a serpent, the wings of another animal. The result was a hybrid being that had never existed in nature. This approach went beyond imitation; it was based on recombining existing knowledge into something new. The resulting design was not only more striking but also more valuable.

His genius was evident not only in artistic representations but also in his understanding of space, infrastructure, and technology. Da Vinci’s mechanical studies inspired by the flight of birds, his advanced maps of Milan, and his functional sketches for an ideal city developed after plague outbreaks demonstrate how observations from nature and engineering could be translated into architectural thinking. They stand among the earliest examples of a future-oriented design mentality.

However, Da Vinci’s interdisciplinary approach can be observed not only in his urban and mechanical visions but also in his artistic works.

The Mona Lisa provides one of the most famous examples. What makes the painting remarkable is the ambiguity of the subject’s expression. Is she smiling, or is she not? This uncertainty creates a constantly shifting perception in the mind of the viewer. Yet behind this artistic achievement lies more than intuition. Da Vinci spent years studying human anatomy through dissections, investigating how muscles function beneath the skin and how specific muscles generate particular expressions. He understood that he could not accurately depict a surface without first understanding the structure beneath it. In this sense, his method resembles that of an architect who cannot meaningfully design a façade without understanding the structural system hidden behind it.

Leonardo da Vinci — Anatomical studies of the arm and shoulder mechanics (c. 1510). An analysis of the underlying structural and mechanical forces beneath the surface. Source: Royal Collection Trust.

Da Vinci’s genius emerges not in the drawings themselves, but in the bridges he built between seemingly distant fields of knowledge such as botany, anatomy, geometry, and optics. Polymath minds do not view the world as isolated compartments; on the contrary, they believe that all knowledge in the universe is connected by invisible threads. His mode of production thrives not from different disciplines simply standing side by side, but from them fundamentally transforming one another. The conclusion to be drawn from this is clear: when we remain solely within the boundaries of our own field, our production cannot transcend those boundaries. However, when we nourish ourselves across disciplines like a polymath, we see this knowledge breathe life into our designs in unexpected ways.

A modern example can be found in Steve Jobs. The calligraphy classes he attended out of personal curiosity during his university years later became the foundation for the typographic richness and visual sophistication of Apple computers. The relationship between technology and calligraphy may seem unlikely at first glance, yet it demonstrates how the intersection of different disciplines can produce transformative results.

This brings us to a fundamental problem in contemporary architecture. We often misunderstand what interdisciplinarity actually means. If a museum is being designed, we involve a curator. If landscape design is required, we bring in a landscape architect. We then describe the process as interdisciplinary. Yet this approach frequently expands the division of labor rather than expanding thought itself.

True interdisciplinarity is not achieved by adding specialists to a project after it has begun. It emerges when the designer already carries knowledge from multiple fields into the design process from the very beginning. The essential component of architecture is not the team that organizes the project but the architect who shapes its direction. The knowledge, skills, and intellectual depth accumulated by the architect ultimately determine the quality of the design.

When that intellectual depth is absent, the result often resembles a collection of disconnected additions. Different disciplines appear to coexist, yet they never truly integrate. The project becomes less like a coherent system and more like a structure expanded through a series of patches.

Ultimately, the challenge in architecture is not to assemble an interdisciplinary team. The real challenge is to cultivate an interdisciplinary mind.