Construction
Materials, temples, orders
“The Architecture of Palladio” is a treatise describing a broad range of architectural methods, orders and rules, if you can call them such. More precisely, the author, Giacomo Leoni, refers to the architectural view of Andrea Palladio, as stated in the title of the book, who is one of the most celebrated architects of the renaissance. Furthermore, the book deals with how one should build certain elements. Thus, construction is a concept prevalent throughout the whole book.
The treatise is divided into 4 books, each book possessing a main theme. Construction itself is not a main theme per se, but rather a subject that is omnipresent. It must be said though, that the first book deals heavily with things such as materials and building methods, thus shifting the focus on said book when dealing with the concept of construction.
It is interesting to see how the concept relates to the different books. As stated in the paragraph above, the first book contains the most information about our concept. Leoni starts the book by describing the usage of different materials such as timber or sand and goes on to tell us about foundations, walls and roofs. He makes the transition to talking about the five orders by discussing the topic of columns. Surprising to me is how detailed his descriptions are, as he even refers to things like the height of chambers.
He continues these detailed descriptions in the second book, where he talks about types of rooms in private buildings, stating proportions and what kind of orders should be used in different rooms. He leaves the topic of construction even further in the third book, where he addresses ways and streets in different formations, such as in a city or a countryside setting. We find him returning to our topic in the form of bridges, stating his observations regarding the materials, beams and arches among other things. In short, the third book focuses more on urbanization than on architecture itself.
Finally, the fourth book goes back to the concept of construction as it solely addresses temples. He does so by looking at various examples of temples in detail, discussing many different aspects about them, including construction.
As a final point, it must be said that all the named descriptions do not only come in the form of text. After every book, there are abundant amounts of precise drawings that back up the talked about subjects.