I chose to search for quite specific words in Alice, because Vitruvius is the general base of architectural literature and it has something in common with almost every historical book about architecture. So to search for keywords like „the orders“ or greek/roman architecture would be quite boring.
I used the phrases „military design is“, and „primitive huts are“. Military design was a very difficult keyword because it doesn’t only include architectural design, which made Alice show me a lot of books about military in general, what isn’t very useful in connection to Vitruvius. In contrary to that, the search for „primitive huts are“ was quite clear and Alice knew exactly what to show me.
The first book I chose in connection to „military design is“ was: „Twentieth century architecture“ by leather barrow Eisenschmidt. I thought this book was interesting in connection to Vitruvius because there is a part in it about Richard Buckminster Fuller. In this part they explain that Fuller used his knowledge he got from manufacturing in the U.S. military for his later designs. Vitruvius does a similar thing, but the other way around. Vitruvius defined the orders and general rules of deisgn and then uses this knowledge to define how to build in general. So he uses his knowledge from temples and palaces for military bases. This shows that you can always take certain topics and turn the information you got from them into other useful things in very different domains.
For „Primitive huts are“ I chose Koolhaas’ „Elements of Architecture“. As far as I know Vitruvius writes about primitive huts. He tells „stories“ about them, explains their role in architecure and design and also what we learned from them. Koolhaas analyses them as well, but in a more technical way. He speaks about their construction, the materials and the way they were built. The point that I want to make is that if you look at a historic topic it is important to read about it from different points of view, as in this example on one hand from a more sociological, and on the other hand from a more physical/technical point of view. Otherwise you won’t get all the information you need to understand and interpret it completely.