Architect to Lecture On Lost Roman Villa

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Tim de Noble

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Architect and Little Rock native Tim de Noble has conjured up one of the world’s lost masterpieces from a letter. He’ll discuss his quest to recreate on paper an architectural icon in a lecture titled “Pliny’s Laurentine Villa: Images of an Ideal,” which will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 31, at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. The lecture, the second in a series co-sponsored by the UA School of Architecture, the Arkansas Arts Center, and the central Arkansas section of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), will coincide with the Arts Center exhibition “In Stabiano: Exploring the Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite.”

De Noble is one in a long line of architects who have attempted to reconstruct the luxurious splendor of Pliny’s villa based on Pliny’s famous letter to Clusinius Gallus, considered by historians to be the most complete literary description of a seaside Roman villa. An enormously rich statesman from the early Roman Empire — he witnessed the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii in 79 A.D.  — Pliny described amenities such as a wine cellar, gymnasium, library and an elaborate heated bath complex.

 “Each villa owner became a Caesar of his or her own idealized city,” de Noble said. “Given the correspondences between the private rooms in the villa and public spaces in the Roman Forum, it’s possible that Pliny may have used the villa as a mnemonic device. He could have used the villa to help organize his thoughts in preparation for lengthy public oratories, in the manner described by his teacher, Quintilian.”

De Noble has been drawn to Roman villas since he first studied them at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree.

“I’ve always been interested in the typology of the Roman house — its order, resonance, and the adaptation of building types to specific circumstances,” he said.

De Noble went on to earn a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University, and spent two years teaching in Florence, Italy, before returning to his native Arkansas to open up a private practice and teach at the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. In addition to teaching studio and technology courses, De Noble has taught in the UA Rome Study Center for Architecture and the Humanities and at the School of Architecture’s Mexico Summer Urban Studio. He has delivered papers on diverse topics at international, national and regional conferences and in 2001 organized an exhibition of models completed by UA architecture students at the national headquarters of the AIA in Washington, D.C.

In his private practice, de Noble focuses on residential projects that fuse modernist space with vernacular building typologies. In 2002 he received an AIA Citation Design Award for his design of the Garner/Herring residence in Fayetteville. A number of his renovation projects have been published in regional magazines. De Noble served as chair of the northwest Arkansas section of the AIA in 2004 and currently is helping to coordinate the “Birds in Paradise” birdhouse design competition and auction in support of the Elizabeth Richardson Center in Springdale.

De Noble’s lecture will be preceded by a reception at 6 p.m. Continuing education units will be awarded to design professionals.