The book „the grecian orders of archietcture“ was written by Stephen Riou and published in 1768 in London.
Etienne „Stephen“ Riou was an english architect who lived between 1720 and 1780, he studied at Geneva and published his first work ‘The elements of Fortification’ in 1746.
When taking a first look at the book it was rather overwhelming, since is that old and still in reasonably great shape. The size of the book was good for showing drawings and illustrations without compromising in any quality because of the limited book size.
The complete title of the book is: The grecian orders of archiecture delineated and explained from the antiquities of Athens; also the parallels of the orders of Palladio, Scamozzi and Vignola. It is the first and only attempt of Riou trying to systematize greek architecture complemented with beautiful illustrations, drawings and Riou’s own designs. There was a good alternation between the text itself and the drawings. The drawings where often shown in landscape format. The book was fundamental for the establishment of greek revival architecture and is probably still relevant today.