The Song capital, Bianliang or Bianjing present-day Kaifeng , grew to be a great city, only to be burned by Juchen Tatars in , just after the work was completed. Nothing survives today, but some idea of the architecture of the city is suggested by a remarkably realistic hand scroll , Going up the River at Qingming Festival Time , painted by the 12th-century court artist Zhang Zeduan whether painted before or after the sacking is uncertain. From contemporary accounts, Bianjing was a city of towers, the tallest being a pagoda metres feet high, built in by the architect Yu Hao to house a relic of the Indian emperor Ashoka.
Palaces and temples were at first designed in the Tang tradition, sturdy and relatively simple in detail though smaller in scale. The plan and grouping of the elements, however, became progressively more complex; temple halls were often built in two or three stories, and structural detail became more elaborate.
The style of the 10th century is exemplified in the Guanyin Hall of the Dule Temple at Jixian, Hebei province, built in in Liao territory. A two-story structure with a mezzanine that projects to an outer balcony, the hall is effectively constructed of three tiers of supporting brackets. It houses a metre- foot- high, headed clay sculpture of the bodhisattva Guanyin, the largest of its kind in China , placed majestically beneath a central canopy.
From the 11th century, the finest surviving buildings are the main hall and library of the Huayan Temple in the Liao capital at Datong Shanxi , which was accorded the right to house images of the Liao emperors, installed in The library, perhaps The Architects Band Kansas City Kit the most intricate and perfectly preserved example of the architecture of the period, was completed in The new Song style is characterized by a number of distinct features.
The line of the eaves, which in Tang architecture of northern China was still straight, now curves up at the corners, and the roof has a pronounced sagging silhouette. The tail-rafter, hitherto anchored at the inner end to a crossbeam, now is freely balanced on the bracket cluster, supporting purlins horizontal timbers at each end, thus giving the whole system something of the dynamic functionalism of High Gothic architecture.
The interior is also much more elaborate. Richly detailed rounded vaults, or cupolas, are set in the ceiling over the principal images; baldachins ornamental structures resembling canopies and pavilions to house images or relics reproduce in miniature the intricate carpentry of full-scale buildings; and extremely complex bookcases, some of which, as at the Huayan Temple, were made to revolve, also assume the form of miniature buildings.
Upwards of 60 Song, Liao, and Jin pagodas survive, the latter built by Chinese master craftsmen for their barbarian overlords. These pagodas are generally six- or eight-sided and made of brick or wood. The story Tianning Temple pagoda in Beijing 11th or early 12th century shows a subordination of rich detail to a simple outline that is Song architecture at its most refined.
Practically nothing survives today of the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou , described as the greatest city in the world by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo , who spent much of the time from to in the city.
The dense population and confined space of Hangzhou forced buildings upward, and many dwellings were in three to five stories. While palace buildings in the southern part of the city were probably crowded together, temples and high-platformed viewing pavilions overlooking West Lake were buildings of fairylike beauty. They survive today only in the work of such Southern Song landscape and architecture painters as Li Song.
The variety of form, structural technique, detail, and decoration in Song architecture reflects the sophistication of Song culture and a new intellectual interest in the art. Master builders such as Yu Hao and the state architect Li Jie were educated men. This illustrated work deals in encyclopaedic fashion with all branches of architecture: layout, construction, stonework , carpentry, bracketing, decoration, materials, and labour. The Yingzao fashi became a standard text, and, while it was influential in spreading the most advanced techniques of the time with its first publication in , by codifying practice, it may also have inhibited further development and contributed to the conservatism of later techniques.
In contrast to the greater uniformity of later periods, Song architecture was experimental and increasingly diverse in nature. Two styles from the Southern Song period can be inferred from early Japanese buildings. It sometimes employed timber columns rising to about 20 metres 65 feet , directly into which were The Architects Registration Board 800 inserted vertical tiers of up to 10 transverse bracket-arms. It features unpainted wood siding with multilevel paneled walls no plaster wall or lacquered columns and much attention to elaborative detail.
The effect is rich and dynamic and displays none of the simplicity one might expect of Chan architecture, so it is thought by some to represent more a Chinese regional style than anything specifically Chan. Little remains of Yuan architecture today. More detailed information survives only in first-generation Ming dynasty court records and in the somewhat exaggerated description of Marco Polo. This architecture was probably little advanced in point of building technique over those of the Liao and Jin palaces on which they were modeled.
The ornate features of their roofs, their bracketing systems, the elevated terraces, and the tight juxtaposition of the buildings are reflected in architectural paintings of the period by such artists as Wang Zhenpeng, Xia Yong, and Li Rongjin. Perhaps the only original Yuan buildings in Beijing today are the Drum Tower to the north of the city and the White Pagoda built by Kublai in the stupa form most commonly seen today in the Tibetan chorten.
The Mongols were ardent converts to Tibetan Buddhism and tolerant of the Daoists, but they seem to have found existing temples enough for their purposes, for they made few new foundations. Chinese architecture Article Media Additional Info.
Article Contents. Load Previous Page. The Song � , Liao � , and Jin � dynasties The Song capital, Bianliang or Bianjing present-day Kaifeng , grew to be a great city, only to be burned by Juchen Tatars in , just after the work was completed.
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