“L’architecture françoise” by Jean Mariette firstly strikes the viewer with its enormous size of 30cm in breadth, 50cm in height and a width of 5cm. Because its height exceeds 30cm, it only fits into the largest book category, called “Folio”. The weight of about 4kg is astonishing and the book’s patina shows its age of nearly 300 years. On top of that, the author manages to enlarge the pages even more, using a folding technique on nearly every double page. The 312 pages are extremely sensitive, which makes it a delicate process to open each page. This format underlines the content of the book, which consist of large architectural drawings (about 100). The only text you will find is written on the cover page and in the form of small comments and titles to the pages. The text is written in old French, with several words, which are uncommon in modern French. All drawings consist of architectural floor plans, sections and views. The buildings described reach from large public spaces like the Louvre in Paris to smaller private homes on the French countryside. There is neither a formal organisation of the book, nor chapters or a table of contents. The only pattern could be that the buildings described in the beginning have a higher importance to the people at the time, than the ones towards the end.
Height – 500mm
Breadth – 300mm
Width – 50mm
Number of pages – 312