DOUGONG

Dougong represent as China’s most unique structural element of the interlocking brackets.

Dougong used as for roof structure that joining the pillar and the column through the frame of the roof.

The composition and the shape of the wooden of the dougong is really neat until it is born into something strength structure of the roof design.
The higher the amount of the dougong, the higher its strength, which can allows the structures to be elastic and withstand damage from earthquakes.
 The complication of the composition can manage to supports essential to the timber frame structure of traditional Chinese building because of these walls in these structure are not load-bearing.

The function of the dougong is to provide increased support for the weight of the horizontal beams that span the vertical columns by transferring the weight on horizontal beams over a larger area to the vertical column. ( Just same as the concept transferring load by the frame structure, I guess) 

 

•Multiple Dou Gong made these structures very earthquake-resistant.

•It can hold the wood structure together even though brick walls would collapse in the same earthquake.

•This system helped ancient buildings to survived for a long time.

It can be found at;

~It placed between the top of a column and cross beam.

~Can be found only in the most magnificent buildings such as palace and temple halls.

~The number of layers of these bracket structures depended on the importance of the buildings.