"This book aims to initiate all who are concerned with the design of buildings into first principles of arrangement, irrespective of style, period or fashion, and its scope is deliberately focussed on the most elementary of known forms. The culminating periods of Greek and Roman architecture have here been drawn upon as well as the whole range of matured Renaissance architecture in Europe, and the book has been compiled not only from actual buildings but also from the wider field of projected designs. In the illustrations, all the buildings and motifs are presented in their simplest aspect, free from confusing detail, so that the main lines of the various schemes can be understood at a glance and the different forms compared."--BOOK JACKET.

Most people recognize at a glance the extraordinarily graceful proportions of classical-style buildings such as London's Syon House and Athenaeum Club and the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. Few, however, appreciate the underlying geometrical principles that lend these buildings their elegant unity of expression. Form and Design in Classic Architecture explains in simple, direct terms — and with numerous photographic plates and line illustrations — the ways in which the relationship of exterior and interior elements creates that unity and sense of completeness. Dozens of edifices by Inigo Jones, the Adam Brothers, Sir Christopher Wren, and other renowned architects appear here, in images accompanied by detailed analyses. The author presents a chapter-by-chapter view of buildings in a variety of shapes, with separate treatments of vestibules, corridors, domed and vaulted ceilings, pavilions, loggias, interior and exterior staircases, porticoes, and colonnades. The informative, readable text and handsome illustrations — as well as the sheer beauty of the buildings themselves — make this volume appealing, not only to architects and architectural historians but also to anyone with even a casual interest in architecture and design.

"The professional architectural monthly" (varies).

An investigation of the complex image-text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages with the following texts in European books published between 1500 and 1800.