 During the Song dynasty , previous works on architecture were brought to more sophisticated levels of description , as in <unk> <unk> , written by Li <unk> in <unk> AD . One of the most definitive works , however , was the earlier Mu Jing ( " <unk> Manual " ) , ascribed to Yu Hao and written sometime between 965 and 995 . Yu Hao was responsible for the construction of a wooden pagoda tower in Kaifeng , which was destroyed by lightning and replaced by the brick Iron Pagoda soon after . In his time , books on architecture were still considered a <unk> scholarly achievement due to the craft 's status , so Mu Jing was not even recorded in the official court bibliography . Although the book itself was lost to history , the scientist and statesman Shen <unk> wrote of Yu 's work extensively in his Dream Pool Essays of <unk> , praising it as a work of architectural genius , saying that no one in his own time could reproduce such a work . Shen <unk> singled out , among other passages , a scene in which Yu Hao gives advice to another <unk> @-@ architect about <unk> struts in order to <unk> a pagoda against the wind , and a passage in which Yu Hao describes the three sections of a building , the area above the <unk> , the area above ground , and the foundation , and then proceeds to provide proportional ratios and construction techniques for each section . 
