Facts of Ancient Chinese Architecture
Ancient Chinese Architecture
Chinese architecture covers buildings and structures from ancient to modern China — from city walls, temples, pagodas, and tombs, through colonial buildings, to skyscrapers. These distinctive trends and types of buildings introduced should help you understand Chinese architecture more. Chinese architecture, the built structures of China, specifically those found in the 18 historical provinces of China that are bounded by the Tibetan Highlandson the west, the Gobi to the north, and Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam to the southwest.
Facts of Ancient Chinese Architecture
Walled compounds, raised pavilions, wooden columns and panelling, yellow glazed roof tiles, landscaped gardens, and a careful application of town planning and use of space are all notable features of the architecture of ancient China, with many of them still playing an important part in modern architecture across East Asia. Architects were influenced by ideas from India and the Buddhism which originated there, but the buildings of ancient China remained remarkably constant in fundamental appearance over the centuries, inspiring much of the architecture of other neighbouring East Asian states, especially in ancient Japan and Korea. Unfortunately, few ancient Chinese buildings survive today, but reconstructions can be made based on clay models, descriptions in contemporary texts, and depictions in art such as wall paintings and engraved bronze vessels.
History
Neolithic and early antiquity
Chinese civilizational cultures developed in the plains along the numerous rivers that emptied into the Bohai and Hongzhow bays. The most prominent of these rivers, the Yellow and the Yangtze, hosted a complex fabric of villages. The climate was warmer and more humid than today, allowing for millet to be grown in the north and rice in the south. There was, however, no single “origin” of the Chinese civilization. Instead, there was a gradual multinuclear development between the years 4000 and 2000 BC – from village communities to what anthropologists call cultures to small but well-organized states. 2 of the more important cultures were the Hongshan culture (4700-2900 BC) to the north of Bohai Bay in Inner Mongolia and Hebei Province and the contemporaneous Yangshao culture (5000-3000 BC) in Henan Province. Between the 2, and developing later, was the Longshan culture (3000-2000 BC) in the central and lower Yellow River valley. These combined areas gave rise to thousands of small states and proto-states by 3000 BC. Some continued to share a common ritual center that linked the communities to a single symbolic order, but others developed along more independent lines. All was not peaceful, and the emergence of walled cities during this time is a clear indication that the political landscape was very much in flux.
The Hongshan culture of Inner Mongolia (located along the Laoha, Yingjin, and Daling rivers that empty into Bohai Bay) was scattered over a large area but had a single, common ritual center that consisted of at least 14 burial mounds and altars over several hill ridges. It dates from around 3500 BC but could have been founded ever earlier. Although there is no evidence of village settlements nearby, its size is much larger than one clan or village could support. In other words, though rituals would have been performed here for the elites, the large area implies that audiences for the ritual would have encompassed all the villages of the Hongshan. As a sacred landscape, the center might also have attracted supplicants from even further afield.
Modern Chinese architecture
After People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the planned economic system accelerated the development of a “modern” architectural style. Buildings of the “Returning to the Ancients’ Period” were characterized by large roofs; the style of the “New Communist Buildings Period” is represented by the Big Ten Buildings for National Celebration, and the “Cantonese Style Period” attempted to integrate modern design with a nationalistic spirit. The Great Hall of the People, on the western edge of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, built by volunteers in ten months during 1958 and 1959, is used for legislative and ceremonial activities by the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China. It has a floor space of more than 170,000 square meters (1,829,864 sq. feet), encompassing 300 meeting halls, lounges and office rooms and a 10,000-seat auditorium for meetings of the National People’s Congress.
Since the 1980s, Chinese architectural design has gradually become more open, and exhibits multiple styles. Throughout the twentieth century, Western-trained Chinese architects attempted to incorporate traditional Chinese designs into modern (usually government) buildings, with only limited success. The pressure of rapid urbanization throughout contemporary China for speedier construction and higher floor area ratio, has decreased the demand for traditional Chinese buildings, which are normally less than three levels, in favor of modern architecture. However, the traditional skills of Chinese architecture, including major carpentry, minor carpentry, masonry, and stone masonry, are still applied to the construction of vernacular architecture in the vast rural area of China.
Beijing National Aquatics Center
China’s increasing participation in the global economy and preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing resulted in the hiring of internationally-known foreign architects to construct landmark buildings. The National Grand Theater, an enormous titanium and glass dome surrounded entirely by water, was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. The Bird’s Nest Stadium was designed by Swiss architects, and Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas designed the new headquarters for China’s state television network, CCTV, two L-shaped high-rise towers leaning inward and linked at the top and bottom. The government spent $1.5 billion on these buildings and rewrote its engineering codes so that they could be erected. The new Beijing Airport can handle up to 60 million people in one year. The Beijing National Aquatics Centre, also known as the “Water Cube,” was designed by PTW Architects from Sydney, Australia in collaboration with CSCEC (China State Construction Engineering Corporation) International Design and Arup to host water sports events during the 2008 Olympics. Chongming Dongtan Ecological Town, on Chongming island in north Shanghai, will be a communications and entertainment center with educational sites, high-technology industries and dwelling houses and a population of 50,000. Shanghai World Finance Center, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates from New York, will reach a new world record of 429 meters when completed.
