#On the concepts and ideas of traditional Chinese architecture and how to build according to them

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quasi solstice
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Why this thread: We do have a fantastic building system in WWM. Yet one may find it hard to capture the style and look of buildings already present in the game world. In my opinion and experience keeping in mind a general set of rules or rather ideals can be extremely beneficial to the building process. This leaves us at the question what such ideals or standards should be or are.

Now first-of-all, I do not have any formal training in architectural history and certainly not in the cultural space of question which is historical China (probably more specifically for WWM pretty much China proper). I assume that within WWM's building scene there certainly are those with actual education and training with regard to traditional Chinese architecture.

I would love for this thread to be a place for conversation and asking questions about such things, without necessarily cluttering threads like #1459665648455127275 of @gentle plank.

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As a starting point I would recommend players looking for inspiration and information a few things:

  1. For general inspiration and mostly figures/pictures showing traditional architecture for a somewhat urban setting, have a look at:
    Liu, J., & Wu, Z. K. (2015). Rule-based generation of ancient Chinese architecture from the song dynasty. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), 9(2), 1-22.

  2. For a more wholistic in-depth coverage on historical Chines architecture, you might want to watch Prof. Yu Shuishan's Arch2310 lecture on the history of Chinese architecture

  3. The Yingzao Fashi and/or the Book of rites

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Now a couple of design tips and tricks if you like:

  1. conventionally walls are not load-bearing meaning that a roof framework or truss is supported by columns.
  2. the binding element between a column and the roof framework generally are brackets (dougong,斗拱) with beams being attached to the column via those brackets
  3. regarding roofs there are two main frameworks - that have an impact on column distribution throughout a building - these are the tailiang (抬梁) structure requiring long horizontal beams creating open halls and the chuandou (穿斗) framework necessitating a denser column spacing. The difference is that the roof in the former is supported by the beams directly, whereas the latter has the roof resting on the columns directly.
  4. On general shapes: almost all houses (not including temples and pavilions) have a rectangular floor plan this is divided by columns into bays which are usually of uneven numbers.
jovial sage
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i wonder how it looks like, visually

strong parrot
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Very nice and informative post!

quasi solstice
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Can post screenshots from the paper and the lecture later. Also if you're looking for photos of 7th to 8th century (northern) Chinese architecture you can look for wooden estate, palatial and religious buildings of the Japanese Asuka period as they are basically the same concepts with slight variations afaik.

quasi solstice
quasi solstice
# strong parrot Very nice and informative post!

Do you have any preferred building compositions (Like something more clinging to an idealistic court set-up or more dealing with challenging topography) or sorts buildings you wanna build in WWM?

quasi solstice
reef breach
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I am interested in Sieheyuan style housing, if anyone has made it maybe post screenshot

quasi solstice
quasi solstice
reef breach
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Yea, hope they have the pieces like outer walls and doors fit for it. But havent touched building feature yet, now just starting to piling up mats for later.

quasi solstice
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What do you mean by fitting doors?

jovial sage
narrow berryBOT
reef breach
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eh no link allowed here ? but I saw links on previous posts, and no edit.

quasi solstice
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You mean for the gates rather than the doors for the houses?

quasi solstice
# narrow berry

Regarding the gates especially those opening on what would be the street: I agree currently there isn't a door/gate that can be used as an open gate. Maybe for now leave it as the frame of the gate without the door.

quasi solstice
# narrow berry

Actually in another thread there was this build using a metal-reinforced plank door variation. What about that one?

quasi solstice
# quasi solstice Also you could just watch the lecture series while doing chores. https://youtub...

Seeing as tens of hours of content might be a bit of an ask to ppl I thought it might help to have a selection of important lectures of the ARCH2310 lecture:

On brackets and roofs in general:
12-1, 12-2, 12-3

To see how deeply rooted architectural concepts are:
2, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3

Sui and Tang urban planning (maybe relevant for guild bases idk):
7-1, 7-2

In order to adjust the idealistic rules of the book of rites and the Yingzao Fashi the lectures on cosmology and rites and 5-1 would be interesting too.

Not sure if that might help

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@light thistle I know it's a lot of content maybe this selection helps. I usually watch/listen to the lectures while doing chores. After all none of us have time for deep dives in stuff that isn't our job or field of research/science/degree programme.

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If you can only watch 1 lecture I'd say listen to the whole lecture 12. It is probably by far the most relevant to building in WWM

quasi solstice
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@timid hill Are you into historical Chinese architecture in a more academic kinda sense? Was wondering about that since you knew of that book. Kinda set this thread up for discussions on Chinese architecture. Bit deserted though since I am neck-deep into my thesis.

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Also @timid hill with you having read some literature on the topic and have stuff to add please feel free to contribute. What is in this thread is still fairly general. Also it helps with grinding for ranks after all.

As you can see here I haven't read stuff but mostly went through the ARCH2310 lectures. Lazy old me I know but it served its purpose for the time being

timid hill
quasi solstice
# timid hill Yeah I am lot into it Though I never took it seriously before I am now trying ...

Maybe have a look at the stuff I posted and expand on it if you like as there are still huge gaps. Should have you at or above rank 5 in no time. Huge chunk of what's missing is application in-game. That's the interesting part long-term even if you know what to build the question often is how. Something I think ppl might struggle with not just with respect to brackets or roofs.

quasi solstice
timid hill