My book 《Newes Itinerarium Italie》 is a travel guide of Italy back in 17th century written by Joseph Furttenbach. According to the author the book should be read as a travel literature because it also describes the country’s morals and customs, spiritual and political and buildings that are worth seeing. The book also contains some drawings about technical equipment.
For this task I started my search with the name of the author “Joseph Furttenbach” by using the “Xenotheka Library”. He and his works were mentioned in some other books. Among them, once was mentioned that Joseph is exceedingly prolific, but he books are rather realistic and practical which could probably related to his apprenticeship as merchant and his study of engineering.
So I continued to enter other search terms such as “travel guide”, “Italian architecture”, “Italian architecture and city”, “churches, palaces and theaters”(because Joseph fills his with with the details of the architecture of them), “ground plan”, “17th century architecture”.
During the search one book names 《Elements of Architecture》written by Koolhaas was keep showing up. The content of the book, as the title states, introduces the elements of architecture. The book’s is full of pictures and examples from different countries and eras. It achieves the purpose of serving as a cultural intermediary for the readers of this book. This is also the aspect where I think this book is connected with my own book.
The other book that I choose is named 《Renaissance and baroque Architecture》whose author is Alina Payne. There is a chapter in this book that discusses vaults and domes. The illustrations of this chapter show many churches’ section and ground plan. There are even some pictures with force vectors to show how the Renaissance and Baroque masters to restrain the thrusts of archers and vaults. This remains me on the technical part of Joseph’s book.