Free Books on Architecture

[Renly_Baratheon_]

A friend just made me aware that the MIT Press digitized a few of their old architecture books and made them available for free.

You can find them under this link.

Although most of them are not relevant here, there's two about ancient greek city planning, which might be interesting. They also might add more in the future.

Also we could use this thread to share freely available books on relevant architecture in general. (if there is already a thread like that please make me aware of it.)

 

[EStoop]

Books usually cite the source of their images, either directly under the image or in a reference tab at the end of the book. With that information you can google them and likely find a higher def. version at the website of a museum (if you're lucky) or a slightly less high def. version in google images.

Drawings, sketches and sometimes photo's are less likely to have a cited source though, since they have a chance of being produced specifically for the book and in that case are not required to have a cited source.

 

[AerioOndos]

if looking for something and google images are grainy, try having a look at ''google arts and culture''. they've got some pretty high res copies

 

[Thamus_Knoward]

Wikipedia or rather Wikimedia Commons has incredibly high-res images for many topics!

1. Go to your favourite Wikipedia article (mine is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork)
2. Scroll all the way to the footer of the page and identify the Wikimedia commons link. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Brick_walls)
3. Click on that and now you can choose to look at pictures of the thing your interested in sorted by numerous categories. In my case for texturing, being able to look at brick walls by the type of brickwork bond is pure gold! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Brick_walls_by_brickwork_bond

Edit - In some cases the categories differ and you get things like "In art" and then you can often select from which time period you'd want that art to be. That's also super valuable!

 

[lemonbear]

I love using Wikimedia Commons pics for the Rookery, esp. world building articles!

 

[FD001__]

I have a few books that might of interest - could scan some and send some pdfs if anyone would like?

 

[AerioOndos]

If you can spare the time, sure! Scanning is arduous but if you're going to do it anyway, please do link some!