I started by rereading the description of my book I had written for the second task. I picked out some key words I was particularly interested in looking up or thought relevant to James Gibbs literature and therefore interesting to research. The first was “Drawing in a more exact and easy matter”. I wondered whether the results would be very theoretical or also include some drawings. I wondered if it would be about the same topics, drawing cornices and columns. In the second task I said it was a “very descriptive and detailed book” and I thought to myself surely all books regarding this topic are very detailed. You would assume writing a book on detailed drawing without being exceptionally precise detail isn’t really possible.
As I tried to find “Drawing in a more exact and easy matter” I obtained no results. When I “explored” I got a few recommended books but none of them really matched the topic or the questions I was hoping to answer. When I then searched “drawing cornices” I found a few good sources. Like Alina Paynes book “The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance”. In the book there is a list of illustrations including 88 drawings and photographs in total to facilitate the books understanding, something I had hoped and expected to find in a similar book. The subtitle is Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Culture. I mainly looked at the second part titled: “La Questione del Ornamento”.
My book being rather old I was also interested in finding some books from the 21st century and chose “Elements of Architecture” by Rem Koolhaas. Just looking at the cover the books couldn’t be more different, a neon color printed cover, and the title and author written completely in lowercase. The basis of this book consists of students research regarding several elements of architecture (all also captured on the over): floor, ceiling, roof, door, wall, stair, toilet, window, façade, balcony, corridor, fireplace, ramp, escalator, elevator. It approaches a lot of different angles on a lot of different topics, unlike my book. Yet it uses similar methods, putting a great importance on visual representation (pictures and drawings).