Recueil et parallèle des édifices de tout genre, anciens et modernes, remarquables par leur beauté, par leur grandeur ou par leur singularité, et dessinés sur une même échelle
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand's 1801 Recueil et parallèle, published by the author in Paris, is a comparative atlas of architectural plans for teaching students at the École Polytechnique. Its engraved plates set palaces, churches, and other buildings from many periods and places at one common scale, so their ground plans can be read side by side. A designer can take from them the discipline of a shared grid, the repeated vocabulary of walls, columns, and circular and cross-shaped plans, and a clear method for comparing spatial layouts.
