First, I started with the word “Architecture” in the body and wanted to find discussions on “civil architecture”. It was interesting, as Alice guided me to Comedies and Plays and books on Ethics. I think it had to do with the word “civil”. I then had to figure out what civil architecture means in the first place. I changed the body to “latin” and searched for ornaments. Alice guided me from Marx to a “Complete Robot Anthology. Changing the words to Architecture and ornaments, Alice’s findings were guided more clearly towards architecture. So I followed along that path, leaving Architecture for the body and searching for copper engravings and floor plans and calculations, as my book friend consists of a lot of exact, schematic drawings and plans. It was then very limited to on how copper engravings are made and where to find them in architecture. So, finally, I changed the Body “architecture” to “universal”, for one because I thought, Alice would think bigger and because it is in the title of my book.
One of the two books I chose is by Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815. In the paragraph that popped up on Alice, he writes not about Architecture, but about the art of copper engravings. As those were very prominent to me when looking at the actual book (unfortunately, I don’t understand Latin) I find it interesting on how this way of illustrating knowledge was seen back then. Universae Architecturea Civilis Elementa was published between the publishing dates of the found book, thus very current and up to date with copper engravings.
The second book I chose, I found with typing the words “architectural accessories”. The book caught my eye mainly because I found the title beautiful. Vidler, The Writing of the Walls. The book talks about how ornaments came to be and how the perception of them changed throughout time. I drew a connection to my book because it covers this topic also and the depictions of ornaments caught my eye while looking at the hard copy of the book.