Economy and extravagance in craft culture: the deployment of a grand building code in Chinese construction history

Abstract

The grand building code called Yingzao fashi, drafted in the twelfth-century Song dynasty, was used as a technical reference guide and assisted previous researchers in analyses of premodern Chinese building structures and construction, yet how the building code entangled with contemporary society, coetaneous challenges and the changing courses of political power deserves a comprehensive investigation. This study applies the research approach of textual analysis to track the vicissitude of the grand building code, examine these contemporary reforming attempts related to the building code, and scrutinise the consequence of the national building code when it was implemented in the later Song dynasty. By tracing the formation, promulgation and implementation of Yingzao fashi in premodern China, this paper reveals that the building standards are the product of emerging philosophical theories and the standardisation of practices is the key strategy in the building and construction reforms. It also concludes that the political and power factors would dominantly influence the evolution of the building code and thwart its effectiveness, thus producing a result opposite to its initial intention in practice.

Keywords

• building code
• construction history
• craft culture
• state finance
• yingzao-fashi