Firstly, if one is to understand Chinese architecture then one must know something of China's history because the creation and development of a national architecture has its roots in the cultural background of the nation. The nation of China has been around for around 5000 years, which perhaps the longest history that any nation or culture can lay claim to. China's architecture was influenced by religion and myth, philosophy and politics, science and superstition, humanity and ritual. All of these elements were constantly confronting and

Now that one knows a little about the history of China and its architecture, one may move onto the basic structural elements of Chinese architecture. Chinese architecture can be described and classified into built environment, roof decorations, color scheme, walls, column, tiles, doors and openings, and lastly windows.

Another aspect in the structure of a Chinese building was the walls that ensured privacy to these very private people. At first in early times, the walls or partitions were made out of wattle and daub or baked mud; later the Chinese began using plaster partitions between the pillars. The aristocracy and high ranking government officials were some of the few that could afford ornate lattice walls covered with paper. These walls of lattice came in various patterns to symbolize different things. For example, the guigeijin design represented a tortoishell and the pinggleiwen design represented broken ice. It is important to note that only in rooms and buildings meant for storage did the Chinese build actual walls of brick and stone. Thus all of the weight of the buildings and rooms were carried on the wooden columns instead of the load bearing walls typical of western architecture.

The Chinese people preserved and coexisted with nature in order to achieve harmony between nature and man.

The next high point in Chinese architecture was during the Sui and Song dynasties (AD 561-1279) and this era in Chinese history accompanied the flourish of Buddhism in China. During these years, the use of a pagoda or burial building was popularized and through the influence of Buddhism, the main themes of the buildings constructed focused on the harmony of the materials and the proportional relationship of building elements. Thus the art of feng shui was born. Also in AD1100, a noted government official Li Jie wrote one of the first known books on Chinese architecture, on both the architectural technology and the building design of the era. This book, the Ying Zao Fa Shi, is one of the only sources on Chinese architecture of that time period that scholars may study today because many of the buildings from that era have been destroyed.

Many Chinese historians agree that there were three high points in Chinese architecture, the first being during the Qin and Han dynasties (221BC- AD220). This time period saw the construction of the palaces of the great emperors Qinshi Huangdi, Xian Yanggong and A Fanggong. The development of the basic roof forms (hipped, gabled, and pyramidal) also occurred during this era. Some distinguishing characteristics were that the roof ridges were mainly straight and had roof ornaments on the ridges, that the columns were either round, square or eight-sided, and that the building were built on podiums and some of those podiums were engraved. These were the strong characteristics of a building constructed during the Qin and Han dynasties.

Chinese roofs are very distinctive in both the various shapes that one could come in (gabled, hipped, pyramidal, hipped/gabled, and double-eaved hip) and also for the way they were built. The Chinese are a very private people so their homes were surrounded by high walls in order to give them the privacy that they craved. This practice led to the development of an ornate roof in both its shape and also the way it was decorated. The earliest roofs were made of natural materials such as straw, reeds or branches mixed with mud and yet as early as the 8th century BC, clay tiles are believed to have be

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Approximate Word count = 2353
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)