Although the old black and white photos are not as gorgeous as the contemporary color photos, they have a different taste.
[1] Old things in foreign lenses
In 1906, a German named Ernst Boerschmann (1873-1949) came to China and stayed for three years.
From 1906 to 1909, the German traveled through 14 provinces and regions of China, conducted a comprehensive survey of many royal buildings, temples, ancestral halls, and houses distributed in China, leaving behind 8,000 photos, 2,500 sketches, 2,000 rubbings, and 1,000 pages of surveying and mapping records.
Such a detailed and thorough investigation was 20 years earlier than liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin. In fact, this sharp-eyed, bright-eyed German can be called the originator of photography in the field of Chinese architecture, and the first person to comprehensively investigate and record ancient Chinese architecture.
Ernst Berschmann
Not only that, but later, Ernst Berchmann has also conveyed his knowledge and understanding of Chinese architecture to places outside China in various forms such as reports, exhibitions, and documentaries. Due to the destruction of many ancient buildings in the war and the great renovation of the city after the founding of the country, what Ernst Berchmann left behind has become the only way for us to understand our own past.
Many classics of that era have always remained in the lens of foreigners, and it is a pity to think about it carefully!
South Heavenly Gate at the top of Mount Tai
[2] Small talk about ancient Chinese architecture
This set of Ernst Berchmann's "Chinese Architecture" has fewer words and more pictures. I don't know how to restore the content of this book, so I have to do some superficial idleness about "ancient Chinese architecture" according to the twenty chapters in the book.
Chapter 1 The City Wall
Chapter 2 The Gate
Chapter 3 The Temple
Chapter Four: Masonry Architecture
Chapter 5: The Pavilion
Chapter VI Pavilions
Chapter Seven: Symmetrical Architecture in the Centerline
Chapter 8 Beams and Columns
Chapter 9 Roof Decoration
Chapter 10 Facade Carving
Chapter 11 Railings
Chapter 12: Pedestal Transverse
Chapter 13: The Walls
Chapter 14: Glass
Chapter 15 Reliefs
Chapter 16: The Roadside Altar
Chapter 17: The Grave
Chapter Eighteen: The Stone Tablet
Chapter 19 Archway
Chapter 20: The Pagoda
Ancient Chinese architecture is often closely related to religious concepts and natural philosophy, which can be said to be a kind of "construction Of France", in short, that is, the whole and part of the building must carry a certain meaning, such as the strong association between many buildings and numbers (such as 9), various symbolic decorations and statues (such as dragon patterns), and the nails on the gate (gate) of the Forbidden City are "nine nine eighty-one" - if the door nails in the official eunuch's home are also this number, it is the crime of killing the head.
Ancient architecture is often related to the concept of the city, and the beginning of the city often takes into account a very prominent theme - the north-south axis. The core buildings of an ancient city must be distributed on this central axis, or the corresponding east-west, north-south, and north-south positions handed down from past dynasties, thus forming an exclusive sense of power.
The Forbidden City in Nanjing has long been destroyed, so let's take a look at the Forbidden City in Beijing!
Derived from the concept of the central axis, ancient Chinese cities were usually rectangular.
And the one that frames this rectangle is the city wall.
The emergence of the city wall can be said to be one of the great differences between the Han people and the nomadic people, and the emergence of the city wall means protection and defense, and also represents stability. The larger the city, the more important it is, the higher and thicker the walls, and the more strategically designed.
Take the city wall of Beijing, several of the main city gates are the urn city, the arrow tower (enemy tower), the female wall and the battlement wall, and from a distance to see the tall city wall and the city gate (as well as the building on the main city gate), a kind of majesty and stability of the flat ground, set practical and decorative as one.
It is no exaggeration to say that the culture of ancient China was formed in a wall, from the family to the whole country, the existence of the wall created a strong sense of collectivity, and the closed space isolated from the outside world strengthened this unity and unity, which is actually another important (hidden) meaning of the city wall.
Nanjing Zhonghua Gate
With the wall, a door is also needed.
In ancient China, in addition to the connection function of isolating the space, the ancient Chinese [door] can also use the size of the door and the richness of the decoration to establish a sense of "hierarchical difference", especially in the building involving power, we can easily see the design of multiple gates. In grand complexes such as royal palaces, imperial tombs, high-scale temples or royal gardens, multiple gates create a mysterious, sacred tension.
Think of this poem!
"Chang'an looked back at the embroidery piles, and the thousand doors on the top of the mountain were opened for the first time."
Entering the door, the core building is naturally a variety of halls. Ancient Chinese architecture, similar to ancient Western architecture, often followed an axisymmetry – which is also reflected in the pursuit of moderation and harmony by Eastern cultures.
The hall is usually divided into three parts, the pedestal, the roof and the roof. Because China's ancient buildings are usually wooden, unlike many buildings in the West, which are made of stone, the tall houses of this kind of wooden structure are easily hit by fires caused by various natural disasters and man-made disasters - like the main hall of the Forbidden City, which has experienced a natural fire, and once it suddenly burns up, it is a fire that soars into the sky, and can only be burned out and rebuilt.
The huge water tank we see in the annex of the three major halls today is the helpless fire-fighting measure at that time, that is, to control the scale of the disaster after the fire as much as possible, so as not to "burn the camp" and burn a large piece.
Here I suddenly thought of a famous fire in Japan, on March 2, 1657 in the Edo shogunate, a two-day fire destroyed two-thirds of Edo Castle (present-day Tokyo).
Both the East and the West have the concept of "pavilions and pavilions", but the pavilions in the West seem to generally appear in the gardens of aristocratic royalty, and we often see ladies dressed in Chinese costumes leisurely drinking afternoon tea in the pavilions of the garden in some film and television works.
Chinese-style pavilions are divided into public and private uses.
Public pavilions, which used to be everywhere, were usually funded by local governments or wealthy families, which was actually considered in the past to give passers-by temporary shelter, shade and rest. There is a legend here that Lu Ban invented the [umbrella] because he saw the pavilion.
As for the pavilions in private gardens, especially in Jiangnan gardens, they are basically related to water. The pavilions in Jiangnan are often integrated, if you have played the gardens of Jiangnan, remember the lion forest in Suzhou, the Humble Administrator's Garden, etc., you should understand.
Of course, there are also a considerable number of pavilions next to famous attractions such as the famous Daming Lake in Jinan Province and the West Lake on the outskirts of Hangzhou.
If the pavilion continues to develop towards [heights], and at the same time, emphasizes increasing space, it is [building].
If there is a difference between "lou" and "hall", I may feel that the former emphasizes height, such as "tall building"; the latter emphasizes width or political functionality, such as the "Taihe Hall" of the Forbidden City.
Ancient buildings, considered high-rise buildings, usually such behemoths can be used as landmarks in the city or natural environment, but also can attach certain social attributes - such as the bell tower and drum tower that can still be seen in Beijing.
The twilight drum and morning bell, drum and bell, this is the most official time-telling tool in ancient times.
When the main structure of the building is completed, what remains is a variety of "soft decoration", such as roof decoration, façade carving, railing, base transverse decoration, wall, glass, relief and so on.
If we are interested in being able to calm down and observe the carved beams and paintings of those ancient buildings, we can find the fact that the ancient Chinese also strived to unify the symbols of power, Confucianism, Buddhism, and taoism in these decorative forms.
If you have to pick a typical building, it should be the Temple of Heaven's Prayer Hall.
Compared with Western palaces, which vigorously pursue luxurious and grand interior spaces such as versailles, ancient Chinese architecture will appear more restrained to maintain the rigor and unity of the halls.
Here I think of the Forbidden City, the center of imperial power, where everything shows order, standards and tops.
Of course, ancient Chinese architecture has actually reached its peak very early in the development of thousands of years, and it is almost rare in terms of form innovation. Even if today's designers want to design "Chinese architecture", the materials used can be diverse, but their style can not jump out of the tone set by the ancestors - because once it changes, the taste is not right.
This may be a great eternity!
[3] "Chinese Architecture" reading refers to the north
"Chinese Architecture" is one of Ernst Berchmann's masterpieces, as a pioneering work in the field of ancient Chinese architecture research, it has had a profound impact on the writing of Liang Sicheng's "History of Chinese Architecture" decades later.
The book is divided into two volumes, the content is divided into 20 chapters, containing more than 700 photos and more than 130,000 words. In my personal reading experience, it is definitely a very niche book. Each chapter is formatted consistently, with the first few pages describing a category in text, and the following pages being photos and legends.
Due to the lack of a certain explanation of the independent pictures, I think that this book may be for the average reader who rarely reads in depth, the pictures are just pictures, and after reading it, I know what it is, and it may be over.
In general, this set of hardcover "Chinese Architecture" is quite professional, and it is more suitable for the following groups of people to collect: first, non-professional readers who have a strong interest in ancient Chinese architecture and old photos; second, professional readers who need to have certain pictures of ancient buildings for in-depth research.
Of course, if you just want to look at old photos to pass the time, this set of books is more recommended to read in the library.
Happy reading!