feng shui

[SDR]

"Feng Shui still stands as being able to contribute significantly to helping us understand the relationship and interaction between man and the environment."

As I apparently haven't seen what you have, perhaps you could summarize these contributions for us ?



SDR

[kalie_b]

This is an extraordinary treat for me, I'm interested with feng shui for a long time now, I think it's time to make some real changes to my house.

[Madimel]

[SDR]

Doing something -- anything -- in hopes of improvement will probably have at least a temporary benefit. Years ago, a study was done in workplaces to see if brighter lights would increase productivity. It did. Then the light levels were restored to their previous levels -- and productivity rose again. Each time a change was made it apparently resulted in a temporary increase in worker confidence, and output.

Arrange your home so that it pleases you, and gets closer to whatever ideals you have for your environment. Unless you feel strongly that you can only trust someone else to tell you what to do, relying on your own judgement and taste is the best way to achieve the sense of satisfaction that I believe benefits many aspects of life. Adopting a program of periodic improvement can sustain this satisfaction indefinitely, I think.

SDR

[fengshuiarch]

I would say that “repeatable effects” are patterns. And yes, the energy that I talk about does happen in patterns. Just like our days (the rotation of the earth), months (the waxing and waning of the moon) and the seasons (the orbit of the earth around the sun) there are other patterns, and each phase of the pattern has a characteristic energy or resultant. There are many layers at play simultaneously. These are observed patterns – information obtained objectively in order to understand our environment. So according to these patterns we call feng shui, a building could be oriented in a “wrong direction”.

Is there a commercial building in your town that is always changing occupants? Always has a “for lease” sign on it? Let’s say it was built as a restaurant but that it went broke within a couple of years. And then another restaurant went in – great food, great service but they went belly up. And then another. I would say that this building was oriented in the “wrong direction”.

fengshuiarch

[ExperiencingArchitecture]

I can think of at least one location that never seemed to work, no matter what type of business - restaurant was installed there. There seems to be something about the place that just does not click as it should. It seems recently some people re-vamped the place and put a Mexican restaurant there, tending to a more secluded market in an area where there is no competition with this type of business but don't know how they have fared, as the place has a history against it.

I even rented a place once that no matter how much money I invested into it, to get partners to work with me there, it seems everyone avoided to do business there, even when I practically offered it to them for a low risk to them, high risk to me. It seems the place had something against it, the location being of only slight difficult access on a small hill, but in a great expensive location with everything going for it. (One company even wanted to sub-rent the entire upper floor but for some reason disappeared). I think the one factor of it being on a small hill was what eventually led to it's failure at attracting people.

Now, about these energy "forces" in the environment, are these determined by chaotic patterns of nature or rather as by some higher order as established in the balance of these forces? And what governs these forces and establishes their equal balance?

[fengshuiarch]

Dear ExperiencingArchitecture,

Those are great examples of the symptoms of what one might experience in a building that is oriented incorrectly.

The "forces" are the same forces that govern our existence on the planet and that govern the planet's existence in the solar system/galaxy etc. There is no balance as such only an ebb and flow, ebb and flow, between different forces.

fengshuiarch

[ExperiencingArchitecture]

[djswan]

Dear fengshuiarch,

Choatic pattern is an oxymoron. If it's a pattern it's no longer chaos, as questioned by Ex Arch. I am guessing my cat got the tapeworm eating mice. The cat's chances of getting a tapeworm goes up with each mouse he eats. I saw three dead mice outside the pet door half eaten, (disgusting cat! where's the barf emoticon) he eats the heads, establishing a pattern of behavior.

Do you see or feel the ebbing and flowing forces? and what are they?

[fengshuiarch]

Dear djswan,

Sometimes you see the forces, but most of the time you see the evidence of the forces. In our modern build environment human activity also creates energies - noise and light, traffic, the swaying of tall buildings, wind tunnels etc.

Dear ExpArch,

The yin yang symbol represents the ebb and flow of energy. Energy is in a state of motion between the two opposites - going from yin to very yin to extreme yin and just when it becomes totally yin it switches back (like a pendulum) to have a little bit of yang, then more yang, then extreme yang and just when it is to become totally yang, it switches back towards yin again. And on and on. I call it a dynamic balance. We want to minimize the range between the extremes or set up a situation to complement if there is an imbalance.

I don't like to use the word "balance" because it is overused and often misunderstood in the context of feng shui.

fengshuiarch

[csintexas]

[WorldDesigner]

Does this have to do only with buildings getting old, or with the positive and negative forces in the environment that determine the success or failure of a place to function as intended?

[WalkerARCHITECTS]

I can not claim to comprehend energies that can not be measured in physicalness as science.

I do comprehend a philosophy and system of intellectual constraints applied to built environment over time and becoming a form giver as a consequence of traditional repetitive practice and design response. As a matter of design intelligence, we repeat successes and do not repeat failures. Built environment is the evolving and growing body of civilization. It takes form from precedent as well as technology and new inspiration.

How does feng shui contribute value?
How is that value measured in physicalness?

TLW

[SDR]

Those who claim to be in touch with "unseen forces" will always be suspect, except to those who prefer to believe in the unseen. Today we seem actually to have a resurgence in anti-science, due perhaps to a disillusionment with technology in some quarters and to the widespread rise of (religious) fundamentalism, so we can probably expect an increase in mumbo-jumbo.

To have come this far in our civilization, only to throw it away on the altar of ancient texts and the "wisdom of the elders," is truly a disappointment -- though I expect we can find other examples in history of such reversals. Wherever there is a market there will be those ready to serve it, of course.

SDR

[djswan]

I'll check out the perspective of feng shui.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui

Understanding where folks are coming from isn't a bad thing to know.