To understand AskAlice better I started off with several very generic search entries. First of them being “Architecture” in all possible search fields. I didn’t expect much since it was a too broad search. To my surprise I found many interesting books (most of them being quite new and modern) and I began to understand the potential of Alice. The next generic search entry had a more tangible connection to my book (“Vocabularium architecturae aedificatoriae” by Carolo de Aquino Societatis Jesu). I used Vocabulary as th Topic and searched for Architecture. Again plenty of interesting results but none of them seemed to be what I was looking for; A newer or improved vocabulary.
This exploration phase helped me to grasp the potential of AskAlice.
After multiple different searches, most of them lead me to a book written by Rem Koolhaas, “Elements of Architecture”.
Similar to the “Vocabularium architecturae aedificatoriae” Koolhaas focused on specific architectural vocabulary which he referred to as the “fundamental elements”. He had his view set on much fewer words than Carolo de Aquino, 15 words to be exact. Having fewer words Koolhaas was able to go much more in depth on every single topic, contrary to Carolo who just gave a brief definition.
For my second book I chose Sloterdijk’s “Critique of Cynical Reason” for various reasons. Instead of being really similar to Carolo’s Vocabularium it is the exact opposite in my opinion. Contrary to the rational and repetitive style to define every word correlating to architecture, Sloterdijk has a fully philosophical approach to his book. His book isn’t based around architecture, which is one more difference to the Vocabularium. Despite aforementioned differences Sloterdijk still has a connection to architecture. Mostly concentrating at the architecture and it’s coherent philosophy of space.
Surprisingly I didn’t find any definition of space or room in the Vocabularium, which was another interesting reason to pick “Critique of Cynical Reason” as the opposite to “Vocabularium architecturae aedificatoriae”.