The book I chose is called Il nouvo splendore delle fabriche in prospettiva di Roma moderna by Giovanni Battista Falda, which shows the orientations and the type of constructions of buildings in Rome. Therefore, I decided to choose to search the word “orientation” with the help of Alice. At first, I did not type “architecture” for the topic of conversation and the results are quite far away from what I want, since the orientation for my book is an architectural concept, thus, the results were barely useful. Then I have set the topic of “architecture” and “find” in order to have more specify contexts.
The first book I chose to relate to my own book is called “Twentieth Century Architecture” by Leatherbarrow Eisenschmidt, who describes throughout the twentieth century, the changes in architecture and their reasons behind. In comparison with my own book, which only contains pictures and some descriptions, this book basically uses written language to explain the progressive movements of the architecture and society of the day.
Then I wanted to expand the range of searching and I chose the “explode” version in oder to find something various than the first book. The second book I chose to compare is called The Sympathy of Things by Spuybroek, who did not only talk about orientation, but in general the definition of aesthetics. He believed that in the new era, with the help of technology, there will be diverse fields for digital architecture and speculative realism. In contrast to the book by Givanni Battista, Spuybroek did not choose one city as the example to present his opinions, but with many theoretical statements, for example “Sympathy is always oriented. The very basis of the relation is sympathy, which is the feeling proper, the resonance and correspondence itself.”
After using “Ask Alice” I found out that even with the same word or with the same meaning, there are plenty of different opinions for that, which can help us broaden our horizons and gain more.