When I first started my search for similar books to Isaac Ware’s “A complete body of architecture” I was very unsure what to search for. In task 2 I found out, that this book is ten books combined into one, where each one focuses on a different category or element that is related to architecture, such as: location, doors, interior and exterior ornaments or also bridges. Therefore, I started with the most obvious aspect and searched for other “ten books”. As expected, “De re aedificatoria” by Leon Battista Alberti was on the top followed by “De architectura” by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, which we heard a lot of in a few lectures. Both are attempts to not only analyse but also guide how to “do” architecture, distributed into ten books, where each one deals with another theme. By putting these three books in chronical order, one might assume, that Ware’s book was somehow based on Alberti’s, who’s was based on Vitruvius’s.
Although these two books are somewhat perfect examples for comparable, similar and connected books I was curious if I could find anything else. But soon had to realize that the only books I’ll find, are books that are like only one of the ten books alone and not all of them, as there were just too many topics and details in all the ten. Therefore, I had to be satisfied with the two books I found first and compared them in more detail.
One of the things, that stood out to me first when looking into “a complete body of architecture” was the load of drawings and illustrations. This matches with the other two books, although there aren’t as many as in Ware’s book. As already mentioned, regarding their content, all three of them focus on making a guide and collection on many different architectural topics. By comparing the titles of their ten books directly, one can see that the books of Vitruvius und Alberti in comparison to Ware’s book tried to make a guide for not one type of buildings but many different, whereas it seems like Ware focused on the different parts of the building and not the type of buildings.
After all the three books are still very similar and might even be based on each other.