A Study On The Standards For Architectural Trimwork In The Qing Dynasty’s Imperial Palace Regulations

The empirical research on architectures in imperial palace of Qing Dynasty could be conducted from three perspectives-objects, drawings and texts. Previous studies mainly focused on the former two, namely survey and mapping of existing objects and analysis of drawing files in ’Yangshifang’, a department that charged the design of imperial architectures in Qing Dynasty, and based on which, theoretical construction was conducted. In contrast, rarely had the research of historical texts such as files and architectural regulations been done in the past. However, as the old saying goes, ’Knowing what it is but unknowing why’. Objects and drawings can hardly illustrate the rules and methods in original design and construction directly. Being the regulations of construction, historical texts such as carpenter regulations set the rules of each constructive issue in handicraft directly. It covers a voluminous body of theories and methods which are still mysterious. And it involves the core content of construction as well-the method of dimension tradeoff.This paper is a study on the standards for architectural trimwork in the Qing Dynasty’s imperial palace regulations from the perspective of Carpenter Regulations. It collects, illustrates and analyzes the contents relative to trimwork in the regulations and it refers to the experience of practical trimwork in the Qing Dynasty’s imperial palace architectures. This paper conducts a comprehensive and systematical study on the contents of basic components, material technics, drawing styles, size tradeoff, quantity calculation and design expression for the architectural trimwork in the Qing Dynasty’s imperial palace. As a research of the trimwork regulations in the Qing Dynasty’s imperial palace architectures, this paper can provide relevant trimwork practices with design instruction and implementation standards, and provide relevant research with references.Being the core content of trimwork regulations, dimension tradeoff is the method that defines the decoration patterns and component specifications. According to some research, a set of design rules controlled by modular system hides in the regulations, which is, defining the decoration patterns by the structure of framework firstly, and the dimensions of which are defined by a modular in the pillar diameter, such as Kankuang. Secondly, defining each patterns of the trimwork and dimensions of other components by a modular system controlled by the sectional dimension of the border components., such as Bianting.In the cases of trimwork, in order to examine and verify the theoretical value and practical significance of the trimwork regulations from the perspective of practice, two general paradigms of architectural trimwork in upper level and common level are given respectively based on the structure of framework illustrated in Vol 9 and Vol 24 of ’Regulations of Project Practice’.In addition, case studies of’Tiandiyijiachun’in the Yuanmingyuan Palace and’Leshoutang’in the Summer Palace are conducted. These cases are both trimwork restoration design instructed by design methods and implementation standards in trimwork regulations. They have verified that the trimwork regulations are rules of design and construction, the guarantee of trimwork projects’quality and efficiency, and the temporarily determined references in real practices.