Shape the underside of every arm’s end in four or five facets, and reduce the upper third of a spindle column by the same method, so that no member ends in a hard corner.
Rules · Columns · Optics · Façades
Shengqi: raise the corner columns
Make each column a little taller than the one nearer the centre, so that the corner columns stand highest: by 2 cun per column outward from the central bay, giving 6 cun at the corners of a seven-bay hall and 1 chi 2 cun for thirteen bays.
corner rise = (bays − 1) cun · each step outward = 2 cun
The rising columns lift the ends of the eave line into a gentle curve, a few centimetres over thirty metres, too little to notice consciously but enough to take away the sagging look a long straight eave would have. In Korea the same refinement is called gwisoseum. It is the East Asian parallel to the upward curvature of the stylobate of a Greek temple.
Related rules
From the intermediate bracket set of the second bay the rafter ends advance progressively outward, so that at the corner the eave projects further (by 4 cun for a hall of one bay, 5 for three bays, 7 for five bays) and rises with the corner beam.
Make the central bay (mingjian) the widest and let the bays diminish toward the ends; keep the eave columns no taller than the width of their bay.
Set the heads of the outer columns inward: on the front and back by 1 fen for every chi of height (1/100), on the ends by 8 li per chi (8/1000); the corner columns lean both ways.
lean = 1/100 of height (front) · 8/1000 (flanks)
Make each storey of a pagoda narrower than the one below and derive all from the bay of the first storey; in the oldest Japanese pagodas the top storey is about half as wide as the first.
top storey ≈ ½ first storey (Hōryū-ji)
Run a single great pillar up the centre of the pagoda to carry the spire, but do not let the storeys rest on it: each storey stands on its own frame, stacked around the pillar.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Shengqi: raise the corner columns”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/shengqi. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.