Although the book is built up quite dull and structural, whilst scrolling through the pdf, these pair of pages caught my attention. Not due to an nteresting layout, nor to the size of illustrations, just by the fact what these pages are telling. I found it packing, that I could easily follow the text, even though I had no pre-introduction to it. Reading about how people used to improvise and simultaneously enhance better living constructions due to weather and I quote: “…where frequent rain, storms and piercing cold forced inhabitants to seek for better shelter than trees.”, I enjoyed following the precisely drawn illustrations on the right side to it, and therefore see how people evolved throughout the centuries.
What struck me on these two pages was simply the title above it. “…About the elements of beauty in architecture”. I immediately wondered what kind of elements it referred to. Isn’t architecture itself a beautiful element? Are details more important than an entire architecture? What defines architecture at all? Then I began to respond to the text. It shows how a student should rather follow a course and try to develop himself rather than simply copying the art of a designer into his own.
To briefly sum up, what captivate me here was the illustration on the right. My immediate thought was, that it portrayed the common known “Golden Ratio”. Instead the text tells us about how an attic of a so-called “Temple of Fortune” should look like.