Ancient Chinese Architecture Appreciation

From the development of square and round shallow cave houses excavated at the Half-slope Site in Shaanxi Province, there has been a history of 6,000 to 7,000 years. Constructed in the lofty mountains, winding miles of the Great Wall, is a miracle in the history of human architecture; built in the Sui Dynasty, Zhao County, Hebei Province, Anji Bridge, in science and technology and the perfect combination of art, has long been in the forefront of the world of bridge science; the existing up to 67.1 meters high in Shanxi Yingxian Fogong Temple Wooden Pagoda, the world's tallest surviving wooden buildings; Beijing, the Ming and Qing dynasties of the Forbidden City, is the world's largest surviving scale, The Forbidden City in Beijing during the Ming and Qing dynasties is the world's largest, beautifully constructed and well-preserved large-scale architectural complex. As for China's classical gardens, its unique artistic style makes it a pearl in China's cultural heritage. This series of existing buildings with high technology, exquisite art and unique styles, which are self-contained and unique in the world's architectural history, are an important part of China's ancient splendid culture. They are like a history book carved in stone, letting us revisit the history and culture of our motherland, inspiring our patriotic fervor and national self-confidence, and at the same time, it is also a kind of art that can be viewed by people, giving them the enjoyment of beauty.

The Temple of Heaven in Beijing

Frame structure

This is one of the most important features of ancient Chinese architecture in terms of building structure. Because ancient Chinese buildings were mainly wooden frame structures, i.e., wooden pillars and beams were used to form the frame of the house, the weight of the roof and eaves was transferred to the pillars through the beams, and the walls only played the role of partition, instead of bearing the weight of the house as a structural part. The old proverb "the house will not collapse if the wall falls down" summarizes the most important feature of this frame structure of Chinese architecture. This structure allows the house to meet the ever-changing functional requirements of life and production under different climatic conditions. At the same time, since the walls of the house are not loaded with weight, there is great flexibility in the setting of doors and windows. In addition, this frame-type wooden structure has formed a unique component only found in palaces, temples and other high-level buildings in the past, i.e., a bundle of "arches" under the eaves of the roof. It is composed of bucket-shaped wooden blocks and arch-shaped cross-wood, crisscrossing, layer by layer to the outside, forming a large under the small bracket. This kind of component has the role of supporting load beams and frames, but also has a decorative role. Only after the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the simplification of the structure, the beam is placed directly on the column, resulting in the structural role of the arch almost completely disappeared, becoming almost purely decorative.

Anji Bridge in Zhao County, Hebei Province

Courtyard group layout

From the ancient documents, paintings in the image of ancient architecture has been to the existing ancient architecture, ancient Chinese architecture in the layout of the plane has a concise organization of the law, that is, each residence, palaces, magistracies, temples, and other buildings are a number of single building and a number of corridors, walls, and so on, around a courtyard and the composition of a courtyard. Into a courtyard and composition. Generally speaking, most of the courtyard is connected before and after, through the front yard to the back yard, which is the Chinese feudal society "order of the young, inside and outside the different" ideological product. The main characters of the family, or should be isolated from the outside world (such as noble families of young girls), often live far from the outer door of the courtyard, which forms a courtyard and a courtyard layers of in-depth spatial organization. In Ouyang Xiu's Butterfly Lovers' Flower of the Song Dynasty, there is the phrase "How deep is the courtyard? In the Song Dynasty, Ouyang Xiu's "Butterfly Lovers Flower" has the phrase "How deep is the courtyard?", and the ancient people once described the residence of big bureaucrats with the phrase "the gate of the marquis is as deep as the sea", which illustrates the important features of the layout of the Chinese architecture in a graphic way. At the same time, this courtyard-style grouping and layout is generally designed in a balanced and symmetrical manner along the vertical axis (also known as the front and rear axes) and the horizontal axis. The more important buildings are placed on the longitudinal axis, and the secondary houses are placed on the horizontal axis on the left and right sides of it. The group layout of the Forbidden City in Beijing and the courtyard in the north are the typical examples that can best reflect the principles of this group layout. This layout is closely related to the patriarchal and religious system of Chinese feudal society. It is the most convenient according to the feudal patriarchal and hierarchical concepts, so that the honor and inferiority, the eldest and youngest, men and women, masters and servants also reflect obvious differences in housing.

Photo credit: Tang Language Brick Sculpture

The artistic effect caused by the layout of this courtyard-type grouping in China, compared with European architecture, has its unique artistic charm. Generally speaking, a European building, is more at a glance. China's ancient architecture, but like a long scroll of Chinese painting, must be a section of the gradual exhibition, it is impossible to see all at the same time. Into a Chinese ancient architecture can only be from a courtyard into another courtyard, you must walk all the way to see the end. Beijing's Forbidden City is the most outstanding example, people from the Tiananmen Gate into, every through a door, into another courtyard; from this end of the courtyard to that end, a courtyard, step by step, the scenery is changing, giving a person a deep feeling. The artistic image of the Forbidden City is also y in people's minds.

Suzhou Garden local

Artistic image

Briefly

As mentioned earlier, architecture is not only a technical science, but also a kind of art. Ancient Chinese architecture has created colorful artistic images after a long period of effort, while absorbing the characteristics of other traditional Chinese arts, especially painting, sculpture, arts and crafts and other plastic arts. Among the more prominent ones, there are the following three aspects.

Roofs

Ancient Chinese craftsmen discovered early on the possibility of utilizing roofs for artistic effect. In the Book of Songs, there is a line that reads, "The temple is winged," suggesting that poets 3,000 years ago were already celebrating the winged roofs of ancestral temples in their poems. By the Han Dynasty, the five basic roof styles of later generations - the hipped roof with four slopes, the rounded roof with four, six or eight slopes, and the hard peak roof with two slopes but with the two walls aligned with the roof surface - had been adopted for the next generation. The "hard roof", two slopes and the roof picked out to the wall outside the "hanging roof", and the upper half of the hanging and the lower half of the four slopes of the "hiatus roof" is already available. China's ancient craftsmen made full use of the characteristics of wood structure, creating the roof lift and roof warping, out of the warping, the formation of the eave as a bird's wing stretching and roof parts of the soft and beautiful curve. At the same time, the ridge of the ridge end are added with appropriate carving, the eaves of the tile is also to be decorative treatment. After the Song Dynasty, a large number of glazed tiles were used to add color and luster to the roof, together with many other roofing styles, as well as the combination of these roofs into a variety of complex shapes with artistic effects, so that the ancient Chinese architecture in the use of roofing forms to create an artistic image of the building has gained a wealth of experience, becoming one of the important features of ancient Chinese architecture.

Roof forms of ancient Chinese architecture

Color

Ancient Chinese craftsmen were the most daring and the most adept in the use of color in architectural decoration. This characteristic is inseparable from the wooden structural system of Chinese architecture. Because the wood can not be durable, so, Chinese architecture early on the use of lacquer and tung oil on the wood to protect the wood and strengthen the wooden components with mortise and tenon combination of the shut joints, while increasing the beauty, to achieve practicality, solidity and beauty of the combination. Later on, they also use red to decorate the columns, beams and frames or in the arch beams, square and other places to draw colorful paintings. After a long time of practice, Chinese architecture in the use of color has accumulated a wealth of experience, for example, in the north of the palace, government offices in the building, is very good at the use of sharp color contrast and harmony. The main part of the house, i.e., the part that can often be illuminated by the sunlight, is generally in warm colors, especially in vermilion; the shadow part under the eaves is in cool colors of blue and green. This emphasizes the warmth of the sunlight and the coolness of the shadows, creating a pleasing contrast. The vermilion windows and doors and the blue and green parts of the eaves are often added with gold lines and gold dots, and a few red dots are also used between the blue and green, which makes the colorful painting patterns on the buildings look more lively and enhances the decorative effect. Some important monumental buildings, such as the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Temple of Heaven and so on plus yellow, green or blue glazed tiles, the following and lined with a layer or even several layers of snow-white alabaster pedestal and balustrade, in the North China Plain in the autumn high and dry, cloudless azure sky, the color effect of it is immensely moving. Of course the formation of this color style, to a large extent, is also related to the natural environment of the north. Because in the flat and vast North China plain area, the color of winter scenery is very monotonous and harsh. In that kind of natural environment, this kind of vivid color brings liveliness and interest to the buildings. For the same reason, in the mountains and water, the four seasons of the South, the building color on the one hand for the feudal society building hierarchy limitations, on the other hand, also because of the South year-round green, four seasons of flowers, in order to make the building's color and the natural environment of the South and harmonize, it uses the color of the more elegant, more white walls, gray tile and chestnut, black, dark green and other colors of the beams and columns, to form a beautiful and elegant tone. This tone in the hotter south of the summer to produce a sense of coolness, unlike the strong colors easily irritating. From here we can also know that the use of color in China's ancient architecture, in addition to the two main tones mentioned above, with the different nationalities and regions, there are some differences.