Since my assigned book is about plans and descriptions of the most beautiful houses of a specific region the first search I did in Alice’s brains’ was “most beautiful homes” with the topic of conversation in “architecture”
The first book that popped up was Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory. A quote came with the find which I found very interesting: “I have said before, and repeatedly in other places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never said superfluous.”
I kept scrolling a little more and discovered that the words “beautiful” and “architecture” were mentioned a lot in connection with Greek culture. Since my book is written by French authors, I assumed the architecture discussed in the book is French. I found nothing associated with French architecture in my search, so I kept looking.
My second search was “antique gothic French” since these are words found in my books title, plus I wanted the results to be associated with French architecture. The first thing that popped up as the same book from before. The second find was the following: Leatherbarrow Eisenschmidt, Twentieth Century Architecture. With the following quote was attached to it: “By the mid 1880s, influenced by the French architect Eugene Emmanuel Viollet le Duc, they began to think of the Gothic as a constructive system, one adaptable to modem functions and materials.”
This book seemed to be very far from my original book, since mine discussed the architecture of the seventeen-hundreds. The only connection is probably that one sentence in the book, mentioning the words “gothic” and “French”. I tried one more search with “plans and descriptions”. And again, the first thing to show was Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory
But another book caught my eye: Van Eck, Eighteenth Century Architecture. With the quote: “Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de champagne de Pline le Consul.” This description comes very close to what i know from my book.
