Commentary: Vitruvius lives on

Abstract

Louis Sullivan, the father of the skyscraper, first articulated the architectural modernist design credo that “form follows function” in 1896,1 deriving the concept from Vitruvius' original writings, De Architectura, of the first century BC.2 In medicine, Da Vinci is equally credited with an analogous dictum on his masterful L'uomo vitruviano (Vitruvian Man) and in his anatomic sketches published in the fifteenth century A.D.3,4 More recently, David and Yacoub and colleagues have embraced these concepts in their own studies and ultimate formulation of novel valve-sparing aortic root replacement (VSRR) techniques.