Dinocrates, Alexander the Great carved on Mt. Athos

As Pier Paolo Tamburelli says in his introduction, the monumental Entwurff of Fischer von Erlach is not architectural history, but historical architecture. The Italian professor and architect, whose books On Bramante and his Grundkurs at TU Wien were reviewed in Arquitectura Viva 247 and 255, returns to his academic commitment in Vienna to coedit with Maarten Delbeke a facsimile version, which translates into English the original German and French text of the masterpiece of the Austrian scholar and architect. The new book commemorates the third centennial of its first publication (1721) and of Fischer’s death (1723). The initial Viennese edition was divided into five large-format books, 39.5x56cm, of which a tiny facsimile was made (12x17,5cm) in 1978; the current one explores an intermediate format, 17x24cm, to make it legible and affordable, and so that it can fit “in the standard bookshelves of the (at best) lower middleclass apartments that contemporary students, architects and academics are destined to live in.” ...[+]