Abstract:The scholarship on the masonry pagodas built in the Wuyue region thus far has focused on the brick or stone imitation of wooden architectural components, insisting that the surviving pagodas from this region have patched up the gap in our knowledge of China’s timberframed architecture during the Tang-Song transition. This article, looking less at wood mimicry, proposes that we stress the role of brick and stone in causing spatial complexities inside and outside of the pagoda and between its underground and aboveground structures by focusing on the brick and stone’s material specificities. Using the Zhakou White Pagoda as the primary example, or the ‘model’, the author studies how masonry pagodas developed throughout the Wuyue-kingdom period, analyzing how the architectural, iconographic, and relic depositing components were structured in the worship space created by stone and brick pagodas. These later became the most important spatial syntax and architectural features that identified the Wuyue pagodas.
