Modernizing Traditional Craftsmanship: Notes on the Working Drawings by a Traditional Master Carpenter in Taiwan

Due to the rapid societal, political and economical changes from traditional to modern and the decreasing availability of wood, temple buildings in Taiwan are unlikely to be constructed in traditional manner. To maintain traditional imaginal identity of a temple, reinforced concrete construction is normally applied to the simulation of wooden framework. It is interesting to know how a traditional master carpenter, the planner and constructor de facto, adjusts himself for modern change in temple building production. To approach this issue, this paper is attempted to focus on the working drawings prepared for temple buildings by a traditional master carpenter in Taiwan, Shi Kunyu (1919- ), which convey the construction message and the dimension of the building as a whole and its parts, in order to examine how a traditional temple form is formulated by Shi with a mixed method which combines traditional building craftsmanship with reinforced concrete system.