The book i have become Friends with over the past year was Parallèle de l’architecture antique et de la moderne by Rafael Freart. Eventhough the book was in French, which i’m not really good at understanding, i’ve got an understanding of the Story it is telling me because of this analytical way the Friends-with-an-old-book Task was guiding me through it. While browsing through it i could study the illustratuions with its measurements and i could really fast conclude that it was all about comparing different understandings and measurements of the classical Orders by e. G. Scamozzi, Palladio etc. Holding an around 350 year old book in my hands was really fascinating, and i was impressed by only the way the chapters are introduced that made it so easy for me to get an idea of what the Author is trying to say. What really helped me though in the last task of trying to imitate what my book would say to certain topics when talking to the others in my Synthetic friendship group, was when it got mentionned in class and was discussed in a bigger context of being such an important French Translation /Interpretation of Virtuvs 10 books. Looking at that it was kind of a pitty when i first got together with my group and looked at the linking words being possible topics to discuss, were mainly Particles like les, anche…, words that didn’t really connect our books at first sight. The classical Orders and comparisons being my main topic, we could not really find the connection that included all of our books the same, the other Topics being residentiual buildings in general, public buildings in England and a handbook to identify all sorts of different churches. But what we could all agree to is that the illustrations in our books play a big role, not only in our books but generally in architecture of course. It was surprising how fast i got an insight in the other books and an understanding of what they are about by just seeing a few illustrations out of them.
In conclusion, i really like this exercise, to not just read a book but let it really tell ist own century long story without understanding whats written word by word.