Topic of the book
The book by François Blondels (first published around 1673) called “Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d’architecture”, which was written neither by an architect nor by a scientist but it gives us a description of the architecture of the time The book deals with concrete problems that regularly arise in architectural practice and attempts to solve them in the light of both the history of mathematics and contemporary research in this field.
Most importantly, it explored the social context for the way “architects” saw “scientists” and vice versa.
Organisation of the book
The book has 102 printed pages and contains a total of 23 pictures. The first 4 pages of the book contain an introduction and a table of contents. As the title “Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d’architecture” already reveals, the book is divided into 4 parts. Each of these parts is different in length (between 15 and 39 pages), but they were all quite similar in structure. On the last 8 pages you can find also geometric constructions and drawings.
Size of the book
The dimension of its height is around 570mm, the width 410 mm and the thickness is 30mm. Compared to the standard book sized the book is a Quarto with the size letter F.
