I first entered Zhang Jie''s i in this material during a visit with him to the Western Tombs outside of Beijing in the middle 1990s. Apanied by my wife—also an architebsp;and anartist-along with my son, we all gleefully joined in a speculative game of disc instanbsp;in whibsp;prebsp;positions and aligs of buildings, artifabsp;and natural sery would e into view as we traverd axes within the site, before disappearing as we moved on.Later on during the same trip Jie showed me how the same principles, bad on 30 and 60 degree es of vision, or so we suppod at the time, also applied in the Imperial Library plex in tral Beijing.As he mentions in the prefabsp;to this volume, he prented a more plete, well-illustrated and doted at of the perspectival phenomena in the e Journal of Architecture.Moreover, it was an at that was characterized by a style of both rearbsp;and expression that carries over into this prent volume, distinguished in particular by its generosity and precision in graphid numerical prentation.
I first entered Zhang Jie''s i in this material during a visit with him to the Western Tombs outside of Beijing in the middle 1990s. Apanied by my wife—also an architebsp;and anartist-along with my son, we all gleefully joined in a speculative game of disc instanbsp;in whibsp;prebsp;positions and aligs of buildings, artifabsp;and natural sery would e into view as we traverd axes within the site, before disappearing as we moved on.Later on during the same trip Jie showed me how the same principles, bad on 30 and 60 degree es of vision, or so we suppod at the time, also applied in the Imperial Library plex in tral Beijing.As he mentions in the prefabsp;to this volume, he prented a more plete, well-illustrated and doted at of the perspectival phenomena in the e Journal of Architecture.Moreover, it was an at that was characterized by a style of both rearbsp;and expression that carries over into this prent volume, distinguished in particular by its generosity and precision in graphid numerical prentation.
In defning and describing“the cultural gene of a e space”，as he puts it, Zhang Jie bines readings and interpretations from veral sources. A crux of his argument is that the e spatial topology bsp;be obtained from sun shadow obrvations, whibsp;in turn bsp;be linked to the“Equal Temperament”at play in both the e dar and the doe of Li dealing with rites and rituals.Equal Temperament, of cour, emanates from musibsp;and defnes a system of tuning in whibsp;every pair of adjat notes has an identify frequenbsp;ratio, also described by an octave split into twelve exactly equal portions, with eabsp;note''s frequenbsp;1.059463094 and so on, times the frequenbsp;of the note below.“Tempering”in turn is the process of slightly altering the tuning of notes to efebsp;a better harmony between them and the practibsp;of Equal Temperament is one of veral, including Mean-Tone Temperaments that were popular in the Renaissahough the idea of Equal Temperament appears to be very old, its prebsp;specifcation dates from the latter half of the sixteenth tury at the hands of the Ming Prinbsp;Zhu Zaiyu, who also obrved strong interrelationships among the a e astrology, deribsp;sbsp;and tonal systems in Te cordanbsp;Between the Ritual Tone System and the dar of 1581.More than half a tury later Simon Stevin and Marin Mennne published similar ats of the musibsp;Equal Temperament, with Matteo Ribsp;probably playing a role in making Zhu''s work known in the West and with Johann Sebastian Babsp;promoting it in Te Well-Tempered Clavier.Te twelve-part division, along with the traditional three pillars of the Equal Temperament, also cides with the tripartite division of the months of spring, summer, autumn and winter, embrabsp;in the Li Ji（Book of Rites）and the Yue Ling（Proceedings of the Gover in Diferent Months）.