Give a hall an odd number of bays across the front (three, five, seven, nine or eleven) so that the central axis passes through a bay and a doorway, never through a column.
Orient by the sun and face the main hall south
Find true north and south with a plumb-lined post and the shadows of sunrise and sunset, checked by the pole star; then turn the principal hall of every compound to face south.
The builder of the Kaogong ji sets up a post, draws a circle round it, marks where the shadow of the rising and of the setting sun cross the circle, and bisects the two marks to find the meridian. It is the same method Vitruvius gives for laying out streets (Streets turned away from the winds). A south-facing hall receives the low winter sun and turns its back to the cold north wind, and the ruler who “faces south” to govern made the orientation a moral as well as a practical rule. In the Beijing courtyard house the main hall stands at the north of the court facing south, the side halls face east and west, and the gate is placed in the south-east corner.
Related rules
Lay out the royal city as a square of nine li on each side, with three gates in each wall and, within, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, each wide enough for nine chariots abreast.
side = 9 li · 3 gates × 4 sides · 9 jing + 9 wei · road width = 9 gui (tracks)
With the palace at the centre facing south, place the ancestral temple on its left (east) and the altar of soil and grain on its right (west); put the court in front and the market behind, each one fu (a hundred paces) square.
Set stones by first placing a principal stone and then others that answer it, following the “request” each makes; recall famous landscapes; and obey the taboos: a stone that lay flat in nature should not be set upright, nor one that stood upright laid flat.
Where there is no pond or stream, make the landscape of stones alone: set rocks as mountains, cliffs and islands, and let gravel or sand stand for water.
Set out the posts of a house on a square grid of one ken (six shaku, about 1.82 m) and size rooms, doors, screens and mats to fit the grid.
1 ken = 6 shaku ≈ 1.82 m · 1 tsubo = 1 ken² ≈ 3.3 m² = 2 mats
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Orient by the sun and face the main hall south”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/face-south. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.