Makers › Engineer / Architect
Zhu Qiqian
Founder of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture who reshaped Beijing in the early Republic and republished the Song building manual Yingzao fashi.
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 Zi Guixin · Hao Huoyuan
Zhu Qiqian, courtesy name Guixin and literary name Huoyuan, came from a family of Zijiang in Guizhou and was born at Xinyang in Henan in 1871. In the early Republic he directed the remaking of Beijing, turning the Altar of Land and Grain into Central Park in 1914 and rebuilding the Zhengyang Gate the following year. In 1919 he had the Ding family manuscript of Li Jie's Song building manual Yingzao fashi, which he had found in the Jiangnan Library at Nanjing, printed by lithograph, and in 1925 issued a collated edition in Song style prepared with Tao Xiang. In 1930 he founded the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture and became its head, bringing in Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen to lead its technical and documentary departments and their surveys of early buildings. He died in Beijing in 1964.
Life and times
Dates 1871 CE–1964 CE
- 1914Lunar New Year Renamed Spring Festivalage 43
- 1930Society for Chinese ArchitectureTook partage 59
- 1930Zhu Qiqian Founds the Architecture Societyage 59