How long does it take to read Ten Books on Architecture?
Ten Books on Architecture by Leon Battista Alberti takes about 6 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 17 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1485. 343 pages, about 94,325 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 17 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 56 minutes |
The page count is the median across 22 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first moderntreatise on the theory and practice of architecture. Its importance for the subsequent history ofarchitecture is incalculable, yet this is the first English translation based on the original,exceptionally eloquent Latin text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded. Joseph Rykwert and his colleagues have been scrupulous in following Alberti's original intentions. Their version is based on the critical text published in 1966 by Giovanni Orlandi. It replaces the only other significant English version, by the Venetian architect James Leoni, whose source was not the original Latin but an Italian translation dating from the sixteenth century.^ Rykwert's substantial introduction discusses Alberti's life and career - as papal functionary, writer on a wide variety of topics, and architect and discusses the De Re Aedificatoria itself - its relation to the De Architectura of Vitruvius, its influence on contemporary and later architectural theory and practice, and its bibliographic history. The apparatus also includes an index and a glossary of terms. The translators were fortunate to have the help of eminent Alberti scholar Hans-Karl Lücke of the University of Toronto. Alberti set out to replace Vitruvius's authority, which had been undisputed for over a thousand years. In a Latin which was both more elegant and more precise than that of his ancient predecessor, he succeeded in framing a coherent account of the fragmented knowledge of antique architecture as it had survived through the dark and middle ages.^ His was the one book which established architecture as an intellectual and professional discipline rather than a craft and gave it a proper theoretical context; by showing how the great examples of ruined antiquity could be emulated in practice, it provided a theoretical basis for the architecture of the Renaissance. Alberti organizes the work of the architect according to…
Subjects: Architecture, Building, ARQUITECTURA ROMANA, Architecture - early works
