The Liao Revolution in Building and Design

Nancy S. Steinhardt is professor of East Asian art and curator of Chinese art at the University of Pennsylvania where she has taught since 1982.  She received her PhD at Harvard in 1981 where she was a Junior Fellow from 1978-81. Steinhardt taught at Bryn Mawr from 1981-1982. She has broad research interests in the art and architecture of China and China’s border regions, particularly problems that result from the interaction between Chinese art and that of peoples to the North, Northeast, and Northwest.

Steinhardt is author or coeditor of Chinese Traditional Architecture (1984), Chinese Imperial City Planning (1990), Liao Architecture (1997), Chinese Architecture (2003), Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (2005), Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (2011), Chinese Architecture in an Age of Turmoil, 200-600 (in press), The Chinese Mosque (under contract), Chinese Architecture: Ten Lectures (under contract) and more than 70 articles.

Architecture is without doubt one of the most distinctive elements of Chinese civilization. Its characteristic features – roofs, gables, columns, bracket sets – mean that everyone can recognize a Chinese building when they see one. That these and other features remained so remarkably consistent over time may lead us to conclude that Chinese architecture was a closed system, a building tradition that resisted influences from outside and in which continuities in timber-frame construction and roof decoration can be straightforwardly traced over millennia. Through the centuries, however, the highly recognizable Chinese style in building has been adopted and adapted near and far, from Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia to England and the United States. How can an architectural tradition apparently so hidebound be so elastic?

Since the early 20th century, the architecture of the Liao dynasty (916-1125) has been known for its size and for its dramatic and often unique interior spaces.  Liao architectural forms, iconographic programs, and burial practices are unprecedented in earlier periods.  This lecture offers new insights on three monuments that open fresh vistas on Liao architecture.  It demonstrates first, that the two largest Buddha halls ever constructed in China, both from the eleventh century, did not follow the standards expected for most important Chinese buildings. The lecture also provides evidence that Khitan patterns of construction, symbolism, and urbanism existed outside China and Inner Mongolia during the Liao empire.  This is followed by an unprecedented look at ongoing excavation of a monastery inside the Liao upper capital of Shangjing, which reveals a city plan that has no clear precedent in Asia.  The lecture concludes by asking why Liao architecture distinguished itself from other building traditions.

Reception follows the lecture