How China Built Earthquake-Proof Palaces | Secrets Of China's Forbidden City

Watch how this structure built in the Forbidden City style of architecture holds up to a simulated earthquake!

[zelenplav]

Ancient engineering was much better than we (modern) people think. The Romans too, and other long gone civilizations.

[yewsoonfatt]

Ancient chinese dont use nails for building, instead, they like these traditional carentry's complicated structural joints, the design allows spaces and flexibility for the building to adapt the shockwave from earthquake. that makes it more durable and safer than pure resist. The philosphy of Yin and Yang, the beauty of balance. if we do not use the joint design that allow some flexibility, but use strong and simple joint structure with nails or gum, they wont last long, the stronger that is, the shockwave would cause more cracks on the building, then it will fall apart sooner then ppl expect.

[greatfroge]

200 earthquakes survived without any buildings falling! NONE! That's brilliant!

[dd]

not just earthquake, even water flood no problem. a few years ago, Beijing was heavy rain, many areas were water flood. the Palace no problem. it has a lot of hole to let the water years old design....

[felixrivera]

Oh how fascinating. I'm making a cursory study of disaster resistance in architecture for my world building. It's truly amazing how this works. It makes perfect sense of course, but the fact that it exists is still a marvel of how we as people evolve our ideas over the generations. I will most certainly be using this kind of architecture where it is necessary.

[zupermaus]

This also aplies to pagodas, whre there's only ever been a couple of instances of pagodas recorded being destroyed in earthquakes through thousands of years. Pagodas use a central column that runs through it, and that the whole building hangs off for stability, while being flexible (and zero nails so the wood can flex). At the top they invented the mass dampener system thousands of years ago, a heavy weight (usually a round knob of stone or crenellated metal spire) that moves at a counter to the way the rest of the column moves. This is why East Asians have traditionally used wood rather than brick or stone (other than for bases or forts) for their buildings -earthquake, flood and typhoon-proofed, but susceptible to fire. There are hundreds of pagodas that have succumbed to the latter.

[zhijingchen]

The joint loose structure indeed was spread to Japan and Korean. But the big distinguish is, the Japanese structures does not use the technics that connects the heavy roof and bottom pillars, leading the roof of Japanese structure cannot be super heavy

[billy.]

The model structure was trying to walk away from the testing platform. 😁😁

[Cephiraxite]

It also seems like the shape pointing towards extreme angles to maximize the number of tiles, stable curvature, additional ornaments and heavy earth materials are designed to maximize weight in order to stabilize the structure, like a counterbalance that pairs well with flexibility.

[s.a.n]

man that thing has some nice dance moves

[imagine_]

He uses Chinese traditional way of building houses with no nails style, so smart. Chinese traditional no nail building is awesome

[theshriekinghominin]

Beautiful and functional, just as how architecture should be.

[samyoungblood]

The dougong looks like a real life representation of the tree of life!

[vintageb]

Seems ancient people were a lot smarter, then somehow lost that intelligence along the way

[puppyday]

Many and details of the technologies of buildings from China are still alive here in Japan. Some of them were made more sophisticated in Japanese modern tall buildings. Recently, the government regulate law to use more nails, but still, we don't use many nails. Hello from Tokyo.

[amezcuaist]

There is a lovely video with carpenters making these full size buildings with very rough old tools . Worth a look . Traditional Chinese House construction .

[cherylmC]

This looks like a good argument for massed timber construction, given the adhesives now available to construct better members. Incredibly stable stuff built for both natural and man-made disasters.

[stevensunj]

Which documentary is this clip from? Thanks!

[dustinbrandel]

What if u add some super strong super stretchy material to the joints to act like ligaments for the bones? I dare say it might survive a pole shift/crustal displacement.

[Fine_Mouche]

thanks to Scientips for shared this video in their Newsletter