Andrew I-kang Li
李以康

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About shape grammar

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I am an associate professor in the Department of Architecture of The Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學.

I am interested in both design computation and Chinese architectural history. I do research at the intersection of these two areas, looking at two broad, complementary questions:

How can we use computational methods to study both extant buildings and texts in a formal unified way?

How can applications in historical research contribute to the technical development of computational tools?

My current thinking on the first question is contained in a paper, “The Yingzao fashi in the information age” (Li 2003), which I presented at The Beaux-Arts, Paul Philippe Cret, and Twentieth Century Architecture in China, The University of Pennsylvania, 3–5 October 2003. I explain how and why architectural historians should use shape grammatical analysis in studying Chinese architecture.

The Yingzao fashi in the information age
Part 1, text (PDF, 256 KB)
Part 2, images (PDF, 360 KB)

Related to this is the question of how to use computational methods to teach architectural history. For my own teaching (see below), I have developed a formal framework, which I discuss in my most recent paper (Li 2004), presented at the First international conference on design computing and cognition, 19–21 July 2004, at MIT.

Styles, grammars, authors, and users (PDF, 828 KB)

The formal and technical basis for thinking about the second question, I lay out in my dissertation, “A shape grammar for teaching the architectural style of the Yingzao fashi.” Here I describe a formal generative approach to teaching and understanding the 12th-century Chinese building manual Yingzao fashi 營造法式.

A shape grammar for teaching the architectural style of the Yingzao fashi
Volume 1, text (PDF, 199 KB)
Volume 2, images (PDF, 1.38 MB)

Out of my dissertation grew a teaching tool: a shape grammar interpreter for ting hall (ting tang 廳堂) sections. This version has the cleanest interface, but that’s because it omits the descriptions.

For browser (SWF, 326 KB)
Downloadable projector (Mac, 826 KB)
Downloadable projector (PC, 703 KB)

I am developing another version of the interpreter that includes descriptions. This is a lot of information to fit onto the screen, so it’s a bit crowded.

For browser (SWF, 452 KB)
Downloadable projector (Mac, 952 KB)
Downloadable projector (PC, 820 KB)

I discuss the interpreter in a paper (Li and Lau 2004) presented at a workshop of the First international conference on design computing and cognition, 19–21 July 2004, at MIT.

A set-based shape grammar interpreter, with thoughts on emergence (PDF, 256 KB)

Of course, all this work is based on an understanding of the Yingzao fashi itself. I have a website devoted to explaining structural carpentry (da muzuo 大木作) as presented in that manual.

The Yingzao fashi project

I implement my ideas about computation and history in my elective course, “A computational approach to Chinese wood-frame architecture.” The websites include student work.

A computational approach to Chinese wood-frame architecture
2004–05 fall (ARC 4301A)
2003–04 fall (ARC 4303A)
2002–03 spring (ARC 4303B)