A Preliminary Study On Traditional Chinese Garden-bridges

China is one of the oldest countries in the world. During a long history of development, Chinese people have created remarkable material and cultural wealth. The traditional Chinese garden bridge studied in this paper is one of the important heritages left by Chinese ancestors. In order to cross a river or a valley or other barriers where to build a road is impossible, people build a kind of construction to link the two sides of it. Such kind of construction is called bridge. These bridges which are built in the traditional Chinese garden and have the use of decorating landscape and enhancing the beauty of the garden are called garden-bridge. There must be some bridges if there has water in the traditional Chinese garden. The more there is water, the more there are bridges. The garden-bridges in the traditional garden, not only organize the water and land transport, contact the scenic points and hold noticeable position, but also with a strong view of the art embellish the garden environment. Through a long time of development, garden-bridge has formed Chinese people's appreciation psychology and special way of thinking, and continues and develops in the traditional garden with some special technique of expression and construction. So a systemic study on the theory of traditional garden-bridge design is of vital importance for contemporary landscape architect's deriving from ancient experience and preserving and promoting traditional garden art.Based on the analysis and sum—up of references and of the garden-bridges with field investigation,according to these theories ,such as Landscape Art, Landscape Architectural aesthetics, Bridge aesthetics and plastic arts, this paper make a systemic study on the designing concept and technique of the traditional Chinese garden-bridge. By the method of exemplification and illustration, this paper analyzes the types of the traditional garden-bridge and these distinctions. And through the general steps of landscape monomer design, this paper analyzes the garden-bridge's conception, site, layout, structural modeling, decoration, and the sums up the method of garden-bridge design and technique. At the end,it also uses some examples to explain the application of the theory and method of traditional garden-bridge design in modem gardening practices. Dialectical analysis of inheriting and developing the theory and method of traditional garden-bridge made to further explain the meaning and value of this paper...