Oninion On The Cause Of The Roofing’s Concave Curve Of Traditional Chinese Architecture

Architecture is constructed in response to the natural environment, and restricted by the material and technology. Architecture also embodies the human ideal and pursuit. Architecture has both material and spiritual values. Nowadays, the spirit and artistic values of architecture are more emphasized than its material value. To figure out the source of artistic values of architecture,we observe some classic architectural forms, and point out some architectural art forms are the results of measures which we have to take, considering the constraints from environment,materials, technology and so on. We put forward the concept of "Passive Form",and analyze the cause of the concave curve roofing and other forms of Chinese traditional architecture from the perspective of restrictions that construction must face. In this paper, we observe the form of Chinese traditional roof in four aspects, such as fly rafter, upward roof-corner and roofing folding and illustrate their occurrence may be caused by the restrictions from materials acquisition,structure, material properties and so on. The three features are caused by constraints, and they constitute the concave curve roof of traditional Chinese architecture.Analyzing architectural forms from the perspective of the "Passive Form" can help us explore the root causes of forms. This article points out that architectural art forms can be produced in a passive way, which means architectural art forms can be the result of careful handling of material.Considering the phenomenon that many projects put too much emphasis on the peculiarity of architectural forms and ignore the construction difficulty and detail processing, which will cause durability problems, we want to call for the attention for materials, structure and any other contents which related to the materiality of architecture.