Within the palace build nine chambers for the nine consorts; outside it build nine chambers where the nine ministers attend court; and divide the realm into nine parts for the nine ministers to govern.
Nine, the largest odd digit and the number of the ruler, governs the whole chapter: a city nine li square, nine roads each way, nine tracks to a road, the hall of the Zhou measured in units of nine feet, and nine chambers inside and out. The palace is divided like the state: an inner part for the household of the ruler and an outer part where government is done, the arrangement later called “court in front, residence behind” (qian chao hou qin).
In the town the nine inner chambers stand in a row behind the rear hall of the palace, and the nine ministers’ chambers line the approach south of the palace gate beside the court.
Give the hipped roof (wudian) to the highest halls, the hip-and-gable (xieshan) to the next, and the gabled roofs, overhanging (xuanshan) and flush (yingshan), to lesser buildings and houses; double the eaves for the very highest.
double wudian > double xieshan > wudian > xieshan > xuanshan > yingshan
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.
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.
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.
Make the avenues within the city nine chariot-tracks wide, the ring road that runs inside the wall seven tracks, and the roads in the country outside the gates five.
avenue (jing tu) 9 gui · ring road (huan tu) 7 gui · country road (ye tu) 5 gui · 1 gui = 8 chi
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Nine chambers within, nine without”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/kaogongji-nine-chambers. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.