Well structured
The Book « L’ art d’appareil qui fait une partie essentielle de l’architecture necessaire aux architectes, etnrepreneurs, appareilleurs et tailleurs de pierres » is about methods and appliements of structural design. It consists of six main parts, filled with pictures and texts in French. The pictures, on one side of a double page, are technical drawings of structures, while the texts, mostly on the other side of the double page, explain what is shown in the drawings. The structures which are drawed are typical structures, sometimes simplified and unspecific and sometimes more detailed, for different uses. Some capital letters are always added to the most important parts of the drawed structures to help the readers find the situations explained in the texts, where these capital letters are mentioned. Also, the structures are drawed in different sections and blueprints to illustrate the construction and function of them. What impressed me was that the book shows the art of structural design as a normed method, as if there would be only these types of structures and no other options. But what the book really is for, I guess, is to learn of its stereotyped structures and to translate them to the expectation of every individual application. This structure of drawings and texts is used in almost the whole book. Although this seems a little boring, I think it’s the best way to design a book like this because its simplicity helps finding the page you need. In this sense I understand the book more as a reference book where one can look up something specific then as a book you will read through completely just for pleasure. Today there are of course other books to look up something when it comes to statics for a building, which are more precise and up to date, but in the time when this book was written it might have been a great form of communication to let architects or engineers know about these techniques. In between two different structures, there are always two empty pages without anything on them, which helps separating the topics from each other. This might make it easier finding the right structure in a book where every page looks more or less the same. What is irritating me pretty much is that despite (according to my interpretation) it is a reference book, there is no index at the beginning.