Title: L’expérience de l’architecture militaire
Author: The Martins
Publication Date: 1687
The book is titled “L’experience de L’architecture militaire, où l’on aprendra a fonds la methode de faire travailler dans les Places ” and was written by Des Martins, and was published in Paris in 1687. First, the title already tells a lot about the main focus of the book, “The experience of military architecture, where we will thoroughly learn the method of making work in the squares”. The author tries to show how the architecture presents itself in military travel and how the reader can learn how to properly construct in the squares. Additionally, the title contains a subtitle that reads in english “the particular knowledge of materials suitable for building, the thoisé of masonry and earth by the aliquots, with that of wood and frames”. The subtitle goes a little more into detail, explaining the art of construction and materials needed for it that the readers can learn in book.
Judging by the content it can be assumed that the publication is a handbook that is meant to be used on their travels. This is also reinforced by the physical features of the book. It is barely as big as my hand, which means barely an A5, and has a leather front and back cover with copper reinforcement. This book was meant to withstand damage.
There is something I find very interesting about the book. Architecture books in my mind have always had very big illustrations in abundance and their image to text ratio was the same. As there is text, there is an image that demonstrates the idea of the text. In this book it feels like the contrary, there are 135 pages and ten of them are images. This images have sections, plans, or a mix of both. They mostly contain technical drawings incorporated into beautiful scenery with people. Which reinforces the idea that this handbooks wants to teach the reader how to construct in the squares.
Written by Anneke Iten de Leon