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Ancient Chinese wooden architecture
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Diagram of bracket and
cantilever arms from the building manual
Yingzao
Fashi
(published in 1103) of the
Song
Dynasty
Ancient Chinese
wooden architecture
is among the least
studied of any
of the world's great
architectural traditions from the western point of
view. Although Chinese architectural
history reaches far back in time,
descriptions
of
Chinese
architecture
are
often
confined
to
the
well
known
Forbidden City
with little
else explored by the
West.
[1]
Although common
features of Chinese architecture have
been unified into a vocabulary
illustrating
uniquely
Chinese
forms
and
methods,
until
recently
data
has
not been available. Because of the lack
of knowledge of the roots of
Chinese
architecture, description of its elements is often
translated
into Western terms and
architectural theory, losing its unique Chinese
meanings.
[1]
A
cause of this deficiency is that the two most
important
Chinese government
architecture manuals, the Song Dynasty
Yingzao Fashi
and
Qing Architecture Standards have never being
translated into any
western language.
Contents
[
hide
]
?
1 The
Archaeological Record
?
?
?
?
?
2 The
Foundation Platform
3 The
Timber Frame
4 The
Decorative Roof
5
Notes
6 External
links
[
edit
] The
Archaeological Record
To some people,
all
Chinese architecture tends to
look the same.
This is
in part, because of the early Chinese
method of standardizing and
prescribing
uniform features of structures through
bureaucratically
supported
manuals
and
drawings
that
were
passed
down
through
generations.
These account for the similar
architectural features persisting over
thousands of years, starting with the
earliest evidence of Chinese
imperial
urbanism, now available through excavations
starting in the
early 1980s. The plans
include, for example, two-dimensional
architectural drawings
as
early as the first millennium CE, and explain
the strong tendency for the shared
architectural features in Chinese
architecture,
that
evolved
through
a
complicated
but
unified
evolutionary
[2]
process over the
millennia.
Generations of builders and
craftsmen
recorded
their
work
and
the
collectors
who
collated
the
information
into
building standards (for example
Yingzao Fashi
) and Qing
Architecture
Standards were widely
available, in fact strictly mandated, and passed
down. The recording of architectural
practice and details facilitated a
transmission throughout the subsequent
generations of the unique system
of
construction that became a body of unique
architectural
characteristics.
More
recently,
the
dependence
on
text
for
archaeological
descriptions
has
yielded to the
realization that archaeological excavations by the
People's
Republic
of
China
provides
better
evidence
of
Chinese
daily
life
and
ceremonies
from
the
Neolithic
times
to
the
more
recent
centuries.
For
example, the excavation of tombs has
provided evidence to produce
facsimiles
of wooden building parts and yielded site plans
several
thousand years
old.
[2]
The recent
excavation of the
Prehistoric Beifudi
site
is an example.
Three
components
make
up
the
foundation
of
ancient
Chinese
architecture:
the foundation
platform, the timber frame, and the decorative
roof. In
addition, the most fundamental
feature is a four-sided rectangular
enclosure,
that
is,
structures
with
walls
that
are
formed
at
right
angles
and
oriented
cardinally
. The
traditional Chinese belief in a
square-
shaped universe with the four world quarters is
manifested
physically in its
architecture.
[2]
Rammed earth
sections of the
Great Wall of
China
[
edit
] The
Foundation Platform
By the middle
Neolithic period, the use of
rammed
earth
and unbaked mud
bricks
was
prevalent.
Hangtu
,
the
pounding
of
layers
of
earth
to
make
walls,
altars, and foundations remained an
element of Chinese construction for
the
next
several
millennia.
The
Great
Wall
of
China
,
built
of
Hangtu,
was
erected beginning in the first
millennium BC.
[2]
Sundried
mud bricks and
rammed mud walls were
typically constructed within wood frames. Hard
pounded earth floors were strengthened
by heating.
[
edit
] The Timber
Frame
Sliding
dovetail, lap dovetail and stepped bevel splice
joints of tie
beams and cross beams
from the
Yingzao Fashi
,
published in 1103 by the
Song
Dynasty
Chinese
scholar-bureaucrat
Li Jie
(1065-1110).