Massivness
At first sight to book doesn’t unveil its full purpose of delivering its content, neither aiming at a certain topic. At first, the reader gets welcomed by a beautiful picture of a city framed in some massive structure with a gateway to its center. The book’s cover is deceiving and not very appealing. The title “Architectura Civilis” is storytelling but not specific, its going a direction but leaves room for interpretation. Reading the book, firstly you get invited with a heavy, compact collection of text, followed by pictures and blueprints, which lead to its core statement.
At first, the book is hard to read, because it doesn’t reveil it’s purpose but its title, which leads to the main topic. How do people live, how are they influenced by the city and how is their behavior?
In all the shown illustrations, a heavy massive City is displayed. A massive Wall, which surrounds the city. Vast brick buildings and heavy durable staircases. The book shows how big the cities have been and that they were constructed to last a century longer.
Individual buildings are presented very detailed. They are part of the City and are explained a bit more. To understand a city and its Buildings you need to know them individually. These are shown by the massive front façade and blueprints which show big rooms and a lot of livingspace. All these blueprints are adaptive and seem to have fulfilled many purposes. All these images of buildings show different, essential elements of a city. There are living, eating, cleaning buldings. It gives the reads a glance at ancient living standards and the peoples behavior and how the precepted normal daily things.
An interesting fact, is the question, whether a life in a city is worth living or rather mandatory. Is seems that all the people that lived there are in a cage, in which they have their essential object and activities to live, but theres no choice of fleeing or being free. That assumptions comes from all the illustrations that show the city, always behind closed doors. Once it’s a curtain, then it’s a massive door with an opening and then it’s the view through a window. It appears that people hadn’t had the choice of leaving, nor was their survival guaranteed outside the city.
Going from a Birdseye perception into a detailed façade and its blueprints. The Book also shows some interesting construction details. The Staircase is within one of the most outstanding ones. Considering this topic, the book is very detailed and geometrical correct. Excact angels are measured and calculated to provide an optimal way up and down.
Keywords: Compact, Detailed, Geometry