Besides wood, what other materials are commonly used in ancient buildings in China? What is the representative building? Where do they belong?

The ancient buildings in China are in the form of wooden frames. The main material is wood, followed by auxiliary materials such as bricks and stones.

The ancient buildings in China are divided into the most common wood structures, stone-wood structures (such as Potala Palace and other Tibetan ancient buildings), stone structures (such as Shipailou, Shiqiao and the Great Wall in some areas) and earth structures (such as the Great Wall in Qin and Han Dynasties and caves in northern Yan 'an). ), brick structures (such as screen walls and fences) and bamboo buildings (such as bamboo buildings in southern minority areas).

To sum up, according to the structural characteristics of different buildings, the main building materials used in ancient buildings are: wood, brick, stone, soil, bamboo and so on. Other materials include: white ash, blue ash, loess, Aga soil, hemlock grass, hemp, brick ash, pigment, blood material, tung oil, gold, glass, copper, Bali green and other pigments.

Frame structure

This is the most important feature of ancient architecture in China. Because the ancient buildings in China are mainly wooden frame structures, that is, wooden columns and beams form the frame of the house, and the weight of the roof and eaves is transferred to the columns through the beam frame, and the wall only plays the role of partition, not the structural part that bears the weight of the house. The old proverb "The wall falls down but the house doesn't fall down" generally points out the most important feature of China architecture as a frame structure.

This structure can make the house meet the changing functional requirements of life and production under different climatic conditions. At the same time, because the house wall is not load-bearing, there is great flexibility in the setting of doors and windows. In addition, this frame-type wood structure has formed a unique component unique to high-rise buildings such as palaces and temples in the past, that is, a bunch of "bucket arches" under the eaves.

It consists of bucket-shaped wood blocks and bow-shaped cross bars, which are criss-crossed and picked out layer by layer to form a support with a big top and a small bottom. This kind of member not only has the function of supporting the load-bearing beam frame, but also has the function of decoration. Only after the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the simplification of the structure, the beam was directly placed on the column, which led to the structural function of the bucket arch almost completely disappearing and almost becoming a pure ornament.