Abstract
This paper studies the style emergence of Liujin Dougong in the ancient Chinese architecture. Dougong is the bracket set of the ancient Chinese wood structural architecture, and Liujin Dougong is one of the late styles of Chinese Dougong. It emerged in the period of the Ming Dynasty and has been installed in imperial palaces and imperial temples till the late period of the Qing Dynasty. Through the long term field survey and documental investigation, this research found out the some prototypes of Liujin Dougong among the earlier Xia-ang style Dougongs in the Song and Yuan Dynasty architectures. The symptom of style change appeared in the bracket composition. In the beginning, because Shuatou, the horizontal member just on Xia-ang was needed to be fixed to the inner main structure system, it was changed to the diagonal member and replaced Xia-ang. It brought continuous changes, the other horizontal members of Dougong also began to change to the diagonal form. And in accordance with these compositional changes of Dougong members, the decoration of inner parts also began to change. This paper analyzed every step of the compositional and decorative changes from Xia-ang Dougong style to Liujin Dougong style. In the addition, it also proposed the typical model of Qing style Liujin Dougong of which tail end is not placed on the beam and is just placed under the purlin, based on the its own research and analysis.