Hippodamus of Miletus

views updated May 18 2018

Hippodamus of Miletus (fl. c.500–440 BC). Greek architect and town-planner, he proposed that the layout of a town could express social order, be rational and geometrically clear, and employ the grid-pattern. He may have designed Miletus, Asia Minor (from c.475 BC), Piraeus, near Athens (c.470 BC), and Thurii (Thourioi), Italy (c.443 BC), but he is remembered as one of the earliest theorists of the Ideal City, and through Aristotle's writings influenced later thinkers, notably from the Renaissance period.

Bibliography

Castagnoli (1956, 1971);
Greco et al. (1983);
R. Martin (1956);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Ward-Perkins (1974);
Wyoming (1962)