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Li Jie

Original nameLi Jie

Author of the Yingzao Fashi, master of "standardizing" ancient Chinese architecture

Another Set of Rules for Building the World · Eastern Building
Northern SongYingzao FashiTimber FrameBracket Sets

Who they are

A Northern Song architect and official who compiled the most important architectural treatise of ancient China, the Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods). It systematically summed up the design and construction experience of its day, giving detailed, standardized rules for everything from material selection, structure, and bracket sets (dougong) to decoration and the use of labor and materials. Its greatest feat is establishing a modular proportional system based on the "cai" — the sizes of all parts of a building are proportioned from one standard unit, achieving modular, standardized design of timber-frame architecture. This let ancient Chinese timber buildings be built by rule, efficiently, and left later ages the most precious key to Song architecture — an Eastern classic answering, across the world, the West’s Vitruvius.

Primary sourcesLi Jie, Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods)

Key stories

Setting a "Standard Module" for Architecture

The most ingenious part of the Yingzao Fashi is the modular system "taking the cai as the ancestor": it fixed the size of a standard member on the bracket set as the base unit "cai," and every other part of the building was proportioned from it. This meant the columns, beams, brackets, and rafters of a great hall all followed one proportional logic. Chinese craftsmen nine hundred years ago already built vast timber palaces efficiently and harmoniously with this standardized thinking.

Relationships

Mentor
🏛️Kuai Xiang　the fashi tradition of Chinese timber building carried on by later craftsmen

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

An Eastern classic answering The Ten BooksThe Yingzao Fashi’s module system "taking the cai as the ancestor" is a milestone in the standardization of Chinese timber architecture, the most precious key to Song building, an Eastern classic answering, across the world, the West’s Vitruvius.

Appears in

Eastern BuildingLi Jie’s Yingzao Fashi: Standardizing Timber Building
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