Chinese Architecture essays

Chinese Architecture essays Architecture, by definition, is the art or science of planning and building structures. Those are the words used to describe architecture in a dictionary but architecture is so much more than a study of how a building is built. Architecture is a product of human activities, and it is also a mirror of human life. Buildings reflect many things life environment, both political and cultural, as well as habitual and geographical environments. This paper is about Chinese architecture; its history, the basic structural elements that make up a Chinese building and the spiritual side of all the grand Chinese buildings. Firstly, if one is to understand Chinese architecture then one must know something of Chinas 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. Chinas architecture was influenced by religion and myth, philosophy and politics, science and superstition, humanity and ritual. All of these elements were constantly confronting and complementing each other. Also, the arts of feng shui, cosmology, and geomancy played a great part in the structural aspects of many Chinese buildings. Chinas architecture is vastly different from most of the other types of architecture in the world. This is because China is very isolated from the western world. For many years, Chinas only contact with the western world came from its infamous Silk Road on which Chinese merchants carried their goods to be sold to the western world. Very rarely did the westerners come to China to sell their own goods either because of the distance or simply for the fact that the western world was not advance enough to get to China to sell their goods. So Chinese culture and architecture developed without western influenced and it became...