"This study analyzes the distinctive look of Hispanic architecture. Its triangulate format, originated in Islamic Spain, was based on techniques once used by journeyman designers and simple artisans. Spain was the only European transatlantic colonial power to have once been occupied by Islamic overlords. Spain's Conquistadors took their traditional building methods to Latin America." "Grounded in historical and physical data, the research is partially drawn from four practical builders' manuals: two seventeenth-century Spanish ones and two Mexican ones from ca. 1640 and 1800. In an appendix, Viollet-le-Duc (a major nineteenth-century architect) explains architectural proportionality and the design function of the Pythagorean Triangle."--BOOK JACKET.