The friendship between me and “Architecture cavils” startet about September 2019. At first however, we weren’t as friendly as we are now:
In the beginning it was quite hard to understand its language, its writing – as it ist written in the “old” German, which is quite difficult to read itself, but also handwritten in a very decorative font – and also its content and its structure with three registers, which wasn’t quite intuitive to me. I was overwhelmed by the loads of information and wasn’t sure how to come closer and get to know more. I had the feeling this book “doesn’t want to be friends” at first or was just very introverted.
But the next task – visiting the book in the library and making contact – was also a step ahead to our friendship. Observing the original book, actually seeing how the author had pressed his feather in the paper, feeling the structure of the old paper and leather and imagining how it was actually just written by hand was not just very interesting but also my highlight of the whole friendship. From then on I was more open and more able to understand the book itself. I was able to analyze the content more detailed and observed its history.
Of course not everything went perfect from here: It still was kind of difficult to get the gist of the chapters or to transfer the text into digital, but I had the feeling that I just had to try a little longer and it still got to work every time. Or maybe I just improved my skill in reading old German and started to understand more and more.
It may wasn’t the easiest friendship but it still was very worthy and informative for me. I think it was a beautiful idea to make it all a friendship with a book and not just a research project. Also that it took place the whole year and moved forward in small steps was working very well for me. I am happy to take part in that kind of project and will sure remember it as a part of my studies.