Makers › Engineer / Architect
Liang Sicheng
Architect and architectural historian who led the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture's field surveys and in 1937 identified the East Hall of Foguang Temple as a Tang timber building.
Mural of the event “Society for Chinese Architecture”, which this person took part in.
In the early twentieth century China's old building manuals were hard to read and hard to match with standing buildings. In February 1930 Zhu Qiqian founded the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in Beiping; Liang Sicheng led its field measurement and Liu Dunzhen its textual research, and the Society both edited the old texts and measured buildings in the field. Between 1932 and 1937 its members surveyed many buildings across north China, Dule Temple among them, and in July 1937 Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin confirmed that the East Hall of Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai had been built in 857, under the Tang. In 1940 the Society moved to Lizhuang in Sichuan and carried on its work.
Also known as Liang Ssu-ch'eng (Wade-Giles)
Liang Sicheng, from a Xinhui (Guangdong) family, was born in Tokyo in 1901, the eldest son of Liang Qichao. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1928 founded the architecture department of Northeastern University. Joining the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in 1931 as head of its technical (fashi) department, he used the Song Yingzao fashi and the Qing building regulations as keys to read surviving buildings, and with his colleagues surveyed and measured sites across north China, among them Dule Temple at Jixian and the timber pagoda at Yingxian. In 1937, with Lin Huiyin and others, he established that the East Hall of Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai was built in 857 under the Tang. During the war he moved with the Society to Lizhuang in Sichuan, where he wrote a history of Chinese architecture and, in English, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture. He died in Beijing in 1972.
Life and times
Dates 1901 CE–1972 CE
- 1930Society for Chinese ArchitectureTook partage 29
- 1930Zhu Qiqian Founds the Architecture Societyage 29
- 1932Liang Sicheng Surveys Dule Templeage 31
- 1937Liang and Lin Date Foguang Templeage 36