Task 3 – Xenotheka 98

At the beginning I needed to revisit my old blog post I made about Peyres book “Oeuvres d’Architecture” since I’ve mostly forgotten her words, but not so much her impressive drawings. Firstly, I began with typing in “drawings”. That was a dead end, because I didn’t quite realize that typing out the word wouldn’t get me to books containing drawings. And even if by any chance I’d find a booko with drawings in it, they wouldn’t be necessarily about the roman buildings like in Peyres book.   So, I started my second try this time with the “brain” set to “Architectural Library” and the topic set to “architecture”.  For the search terms I picked “praisal roman” since Peyre really did praise the ancient roman architecture. I came up with Aurelis “The Posibility of an absolute architecture” in which Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. He also discusses the potential to make society “perfect” with architecture as a tool. Although truth be told he doesn’t really praise roman architecture as Peyre does. Instead, he describes how they wanted to achieve it. The second book I found is Schumacher’s “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”. This book series always popped up when I was searching for key words of Peyres book. And it doesn’t take long to understand why. Schuhmacher, just as Peyre compiled, albeit with much more text than drawings, a portfolio of different buildings and architectural elements. But he didn’t praise as well, it is more of an analysis. Also, he didn’t just describe roman buildings but much rather a whole variety of different styles. Comparing the both to “Ouevres d’Architecture”, I’d say that Aurelis “The Possibility of an absolute architecture” seems to be closer to Peyres book. He didn’t praise the same things as her but seems to have the same goal; a better society reached with better architecture and understanding of it. Schhmacher on the other hand just simply uses the same tool as Peyre.