Composition in terms of typography and illustrations
The book mostly contains written pages, divided by headlines, sub-headings and margins. One margin mostly takes from a third to half of the page. Optically it remembers of a normal novel with several chapters and it is not directly recognizable as a scientific book. For example there are no footnotes. The Chapter start with a big headline, followed by a short description in cursive style as a sub heading. The first later of an abstract has four to five times the size of the following letters to mark the beginning of the abstract. Some important sentences are written in cursive style too.
Especially at the beginning of the book there are only a few illustrations to find. If there is an illustration it fills the whole page though. Mostly the illustrations show schematics and details and some of them are available as foldout spreads (they are folded into the book). Throughout the book there are also some decorative drawings to find, mostly at the beginning or ending of a chapter to fil the page. At the end of the book there are lots of architectural drawings and perspective views, as well as schematics as an attachment. I am not sure about the French word “Planche”, but as a number follows I guess the illustrations are numbered for sure. Every now and there but mostly at the end of the book, there are also tables to be found.
Generally I find the book more to appear like an novel. It seems like it is important to read it page by page as the text-illustration ratio is clearly in favor of the text.
As I found out that the book was written as course material by a professor for his students I am pretty sure that it was written for academic study.