For my book, which is a lexicon I chose to search for other lexicons focusing on architecture. A normal book about an architectural topic wouldn’t have made sense for me, because “vocabularium architecturæ ædificatoriæ” touches on nearly every architectural topic, present in the 18. century.
First I searched for the name of my book with different “brains” such as: Architecture, lexicon, dictionary or even different names. I mostly got no results at all and a couple texts about vitruvius.
Then I decided to just search for “lexicon” and was successful with the “brain”: Architecture. Sadly finding other lexicons was very hard, but I found other books, that were some sort of lexicon or talking about words.
The first book I found that I thought would be fitting is “Elements of architecture” by Rem Koohaas. It is a book published in 2014 as a summary of their Architecture Biennale exhibition and talks about basic architectural elements such as: Stairs, windows, doors, balconies and fireplaces. It goes much more into depth about the elements discussed than in “vocabularium architecturæ ædificatoriæ” which only explains the words. In this book are also pictures and graphics, while “vocabularium architecturæ ædificatoriæ” consisted of only written words with a little decor.
The second book I found is the book “Words and Buildings” by Adrian Forty. The book was released in 2004. It is a book about Language in architecture. He examines social aspects of the two themes. Among all the chapters are chapters like: language and drawing, gender in architecture and a vocabulary of key words. There even is a small modernist dictionary. The book also doesn’t talk as much about words for objects like “column” or “Balcony” but about complex descriptive words like “character” or “Space”.
I think in our time of the internet there isn’t a big need for a shallow dictionary. Simple word definitions are easily accessible on search engines like google. A deeper analysis of words and their meanings is something you still really need a longer text for.