Poetry in architecture

The tradition of Chinese architecture, writes Professor Jiren Feng, originates in the confluence of two streams, the crafts and the literary, but with the craftsmen often partnering the literati as near equals. Moreover, architecture and building in pre-modern China had their own complex, ancient literature concerned with metaphors rather than technical work, using analogy between plant forms and construction, not of look-alike but structurally reasoned. Chinese architecture, then, reflects the rich Chinese poetic tradition, an essential contrast between the path taken by the Western world and that of Chinese civilization. Feng, Jiren (2012), Chinese Architecture and Metaphor, Hong Kong University Press.