Vaughan Hart is a leading architectural historian and Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath.[1] Hart studied architecture at Bath and Cambridge Universities (Trinity Hall). He worked first as an architectural assistant to Colin St John Wilson on the British Library project in London, before studying for a doctorate in Cambridge under Joseph Rykwert. Hart 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. Hart's concerns lie with the symbolic function of architecture, and with the meaning of architectural forms. He is the co-translator (with Peter Hicks) of the treatises of Sebastiano Serlio, and he has also translated the two guidebooks to Rome published by Andrea Palladio. His monographs include influential studies of the work of Inigo Jones, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. The latter was awarded the Best Book on British Art Prize of the American College Art Association in 2005.
In 1997 Hart was the curator of an exhibition entitled 'Paper Palaces: Architectural books from 1472 to 1800 in the collection of Cambridge University Library'. This consisted of architectural prints, manuscripts and over 140 rare books and incunabula, and was held in the Adeane Gallery of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It was opened by HRH the Duke of Gloucester. In 2008 he co-organised (with Peter Hicks and Alan Day) an exhibition entitled 'Palldio's Rome' held at the British School at Rome, and in 2009 he co-organised (again with Hicks and Day) an exhibition of research work held at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers at the Sorbonne, Paris. Hart has pioneered the use of the computer to visualise lost buildings and investigate historic forms. His work has been displayed in the 1993 and 1995 Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, in the National Theatre Museum at Covent Garden, the George Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and in the ‘Nelson and Napoleon’ exhibition held at the National Maritime Museum, London, in July 2005.
Vaughan Hart has lectured in many schools of architecture throughout the world, and his graduate students hold academic and museum posts in Australia, Sweden and the UK. Hart has held visiting posts as a Senior Fellow of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in 2005, and as a Visiting Scholar at St John's College, Oxford in the same year. In 2009 he was an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C..[1] He is currently also a visiting Professor at Kent University. In 2009 he was appointed to the AHRC Peer Review College, and has been a panel member since 2011.