page_title: Ancient Chinese wooden architecture
section_title: Timber frame
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Chinese wooden architecture / Structural features / Timber frame
caption_attribution_description: English: Smear removed from original by mixing channels: Red: 0.2 green + blue Green: 0.4 green + 0.65 blue Blue: blue as red is badly smeared, green is slightly smeared but has least noise, and blue is not smeared but has most noise.
context_page_description: 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. 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.
  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.
context_section_description: A fundamental achievement of Chinese wooden architecture is the load-bearing timber frame, a network of interlocking wooden supports forming the skeleton of the building. This is considered China's major contribution to worldwide architectural technology. However, it is not known how the builders got the huge wooden support columns into position.
  Unlike western architecture, in ancient Chinese wooden architecture, the wall only defined an enclosure, and did not form a load-bearing element. Buildings in China have been supported by wooden frames for as long as seven millennia. The emergence of the characteristic articulated wooden Chinese frame emerged during the  Neolithic period. Seven thousand years ago mortise and tenon joinery was used to build wood-framed houses. (The oldest are at Hemudu site at Zhejiang). Over a thousand of these sites have been identified, usually with circular, square or oblong shaped buildings. During the Yangshao culture in the Middle Neolithic, circular  and rectangular semisubterranean structures are found with wooden beams and columns. Wooden beams or earth supported the roofs which were most likely thatched.
  As the villages and towns grew they adhered to symmetrical shapes. Symmetry was also important in the layout of homes, altars, and villages.
  In traditional Chinese architecture, every facet of a building was decorated using various materials and techniques. Simple ceiling 
  ornamentations in ordinary buildings were made of wooden strips and covered with paper. More decorative was the lattice ceiling, constructed of woven wooden strips or sorghum stems fastened to the beams.
  Dougong  is a unique structural element of  interlocking wooden brackets, one of the most important elements in traditional Chinese architecture. It first appeared in buildings of the last centuries BC  and evolved into  a structural network that joined pillars and columns to the frame of the roof. Dougong was widely used in the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BC) and developed into a complex set of interlocking parts by its peak in the Tang and Song periods. Since ancient times when the Chinese  first began to use wood for building, joinery has been a major focus and craftsmen cut the wooden pieces to  fit so perfectly that no glue or fasteners were necessary.
caption: 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).
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-T1", "Image DateTime": "2015:07:14 13:27:19", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "192", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/8", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:08:14 12:07:26", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:08:14 12:07:26", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode, return light detected", "EXIF FocalLength": "67/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "888", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1170", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}