Ancient Chinese Wooden Architecture

Ancient Chinese wooden architecture is a style of Chinese architecture built around a foundation platform, a timber frame structure and a decorative roof, and it has received less Western scholarly attention than other Chinese architectural traditions even though timber framing was its dominant structural method for millennia. In this system, walls served only to define an enclosure and were not load-bearing, with the timber frame alone carrying the weight of the roof, and builders used mortise and tenon joinery, a technique documented as far back as seven millennia, to cut wooden members precisely enough to fit together without glue or fasteners. Its most distinctive feature is the dougong, an interlocking system of wooden brackets that transfers roof loads to the columns below, a technique traced from Neolithic origins through China documented dynasties using both archaeological evidence and historical building manuals.