Between Architecture and Archaeology: The Collection of Drawings by Liang Sicheng as a Chinese Vignola

The essay is about a series of 59 drawings coming from A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, published in the United States by MIT Press in 1984 by LIANG Sicheng (part of an original history of Chinese architecture, finished 1944 and unofficially printed in 1950s for students at Tsinghua University. The 59 plates of the collection of drawings, which is today widespread as an essential tool of knowledge in Chinese architecture schools, are part of a story little known in the West which however owes a great deal to Western architectural culture, in its having been taken as an input of a possible and huge comparative study.