58

ARTICLE

Feng shui: an alternative framework forconnplexity in designMichael Y. Mak and S. Thomas Ng

AbstractBuilding design is a very complex process that requires an integration of creativity, rationality and self-organization. Although there are numerous studies that examine how architects learn and apply theirknowledge to design new huildings, the design process still cannot be explicitly defined. Because the waythat architectural design knowledge is applied to huilding design cannot he formulated, the term 'black hox'is used to represent an architect s design mechanism that cannot he logically explained. Designers useintuition and individual past experiences to make heuristic decisions when tackling new situations in buildingdesign. These characteristics are similar to the Chinese philosophy of direct insigbt into the nature andprinciples and practice of feng shui as applied to building design, f eng shui is traditional Chinese wisdomaimed at creating harmony among the environment, huildings and people. Tbe aims of tbis paper are toexamine the potential of feng shui knowledge as an alternative approach to huilding design and to derive aconceptual framework based on the principles and practice of feng shui.

• Keywords - Feng shui; building design; complexity in design

INTRODUCTIONThe nature of design falls between science and art, andarchitectural design is a complex and intuitive process.Architects use knowledge from past experiences andfrom their own theories to create spaces with desiredexperiential qualities (Suckle, 1980». Jones (1970)recognized the complexity of the design process andsuggested that a designer working on a problem isengaged simultaneously in three types of activity:

« Creativity: a designer is a 'black box' out of whichcomes a mysterious creative leap.

• Rationality: a designer is a 'glass box' insidewhich can be discerned a completely explicablerational process.

• Control over the design process: a designer is aself-organizing system capable of finding short-cuts across unknown territory.

This integrative design process is similar to theChinese holistic view and the feng shui approach tothe built environment,

Feng shui is a body of ancient Chinese wisdom inknowledge and experience relating to the builtenvironment that has accumulated over more than3000 years. There are two main schools of thoughtand practice in feng shui - the Compass School andthe Form School. The Form School approach hasbeen well recognized and widely accepted by fengshui researchers as comprising a scientific basis forthe analysis of the built environment (He, 1990;Cheng and Kong, 1993), The principles and practicesof feng shui are aimed at creating a harmonized builtenvironment for people to live in, and it represents atraditional Chinese architectural theory for selectingfavourable sites as well as a theory for designingcities and buildings (Lee. 1986).

Nowadays, as many researchers seek to establisha deeper understanding of the relationships between

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Feng shui: an alternativ« framework for complexity in design 59

the human and natural environments, architectsbegin to recognize feng shui as a broad ecologicallyand architecturally connected paradigm. Hwangbo(19991 believed that the practice of feng shui is anintuitive nnatter involving site selection and spatialorganization, and it has strong parallels with theWestern concept of geometry in architectural design.

The aims of this paper are to examine the potentialof feng shui knowledge as an alternative approach tobuilding design and to derive a conceptual frameworkbased on the principles and practice of feng shuiwhich comprises the following steps. First, the natureand compiexity of design are explored, and similaritiesto Chinese philosophy and feng shui knowledge areexplained. Second, the principles and practices of theForm School approach are introduced because it hasbeen well recognized and widely accepted by fengshui researchers as comprising a scientific basis forthe analysis of the built environment. Third, fourfundamental concepts of the Form School approachare derived which provide a broad understanding offeng shui knowledge. Finally, a conceptual frameworkof feng shui for building design is constructed utilizingthe concept hierarchy approach to establish a fengshui knowledge structure.

The findings of this paper contribute significantlyto current practice of architectural design byproviding an alternative framework for building designand creating a hierarchical structure of feng shuiknowledge for building design. The purpose of thispaper is not to give feng shui knowledge validity froma Western perspective of science and does not setout to challenge conventional theories of architecturaldesign; rather, this feng shui design frameworksuggests the significance of an unconventionalalternative system of analysis of building design,

COMPLEXITIES IN DESIGNIt is generally recognized that design falls somewherebetween two extremes - science and art - andarchitectural design lies near the centre of thisspectrum (Jung, 1996). Sargent (1994) studied thenature of design and suggested that there can be nounitary 'science of design'.

In the 1960s, design was interpreted in a similarway to the interpretation of science - the format of a

scientific method was constructed in the form ofanalysis and synthesis. This approach originated in thenotions of objectivity, rationality and universalism thatare believed to constitute the scientific method -breaking the problem down to fragments and solvingeach of these separately before attempting some grandsynthesis (Asimow, 1962; Jones, 1963; Archer, 1969).

However, more researchers (Gregory, 1966;Simon, 1969) began to recognize that design is notlike science. This approach was largely based on thephilosophy of science developed by Popper (1972)and Kuhn (1970). Popper (1972) suggested theconcept of the 'conjecture-refutation' model of thescientific method instead of the logical process ofinduction whereby laws can be inferred from truefacts. Kuhn (1970) proposed a 'paradigm' concept toexplain the evolution of scientific knowledge, wherescientific knowledge progresses through a 'paradigmshift'.

Jones (1970) admitted that it is impossible toascertain the nature of design. He outlined three keypoints to attempt to describe the nature of design,which are summarized by Raftery ( 19911 as follows:

• There are very often long periods when theperson who is about to make an original workseems to do nothing except take in informationand labour fruitlessly at seemingly trivial aspectsof a problem. This is known as 'incubation'.

• The solution to a particular problem or theoccurrence of an original idea often happenswhen, at some particular point in time, everythingseems to fall into place. This is known as the'leap of insight' or 'change of set'. Basically theproblem is perceived in a new light and veryoften an apparently complex problem turns into avery much simpler one.

• The main enemies of originality are mental rigidityand wishful thinking.

Incubation was a concept proposed by Poincare(1929) who interpreted the conditions for creativity as:

• A period of conscious work, data assembled,problem defined, etc. and some trials made atsolutions.

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60 M,Y, MAK AND S.T. NG

The unconscious mind works at useful and fertilecombinations during this time and useless areasare inhibited.A hypothesis is derived which gives a fruitfuldirection. In Poincare's own words as 'a period ofpreliminary conscious work always precedes allfruitful unconscious work'.

Following the conclusions of Jones' and Poincare'swork, design was described as a 'problem-solving'activity. However, the solution to the problem wasperceived by individual designers and not measuredobjectively- The further implications of both Jones'and Poincare's work were that the solution isproduced by an unconscious thought process.Humphreys (1976) recognized that this mysticalapproach is remarkably similar to the concept of'satort' (the enlightenment in Zen Buddhist thought) inChinese philosophy,

FORM SCHOOL APPROACHFeng shui is a body of Chinese wisdom in knowledgeand experience relating to the built environment thathas accumulated over more than 3000 years. It hasbeen developing throughout the existence of Chinesehistory and civilization, and has evolved from Chinesephilosophy. It is founded on the earliest and greatestdocument of Chinese philosophy, YiJing (the Book ofChanges) that originated around 800 BC, Theprimitive knowledge of feng shui was based onobservations from three sources - astronómica!phenomena, natural phenomena and humanbehaviour (Feuchtwang. 1974). The principles andpractices of feng shui are aimed at creating aharmonized built environment. Feng shui represents atraditional Chinese architectural theory for selectingfavourable sites as weil as a theory for designingcities and buildings (Lee, 1986),

There are two main schools of thought andpractice in feng shui - the Compass School and theForm School. The Compass School is based onmetaphysical speculations of cosmology, in particularby analysing the directional aspects in terms of therelationships between the five elements, eighttrigrams, heavenly stems, earthly branches andconstellations. Practice in the Compass School usesprimarily the Luopan (feng shui compass) and the

composed elements of time in space (Skinner, 1982;Chiou and Krishnamurti, 1997). The Form School isprimarily based on the verification of the physicalconfiguration of mountains and watercoursessurrounding sites and buildings. Its theory was builtupon an understanding of the landscape - the profilesof the land, the sources of rivers and the terrain. Thepractice of the Form School first observes the landformation and terrain, and then determines thelocation and orientation of buildings.

The development of the Form School was widelyaccepted by the upper class of the ancient Chinesesociety and attracted scholars and intellectuals to joinits practice. The principles of the Form School havebeen applied to design and construct castles, palacesand towns in China since ancient times (He and Luo,1995). Lee (1986: 367) suggested that the principlesand practices of the Form School approach represent'a compendium of Chinese architectural theory'.

Since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). these twoschools of thought were not exclusively attached totheir own methods for the practice of feng shui, butrather combined and integrated ideas from both (Lee,1986). However, the Form School approach remainedthe primary consideration in feng shui practice (Xu,1990; Too, 1996), Contemporarily, the Form Schoolapproach has been recognized as comprising ascientific basis for the analysis of the builtenvironment (He, 1990; Wang, 1992; Cheng andKong, 1993; Mak and Ng, 2005), For instance,research investigations carried out by Xu (1990) havecompared the fang shui concepts using the FormSchool approach and the Hendler model, a well-known Western model of site analysis. The resultsindicated that feng shui is a more powerful tool in siteanalysis than the Hendler model.

According to Zang Shu (the Book of Burial), thefirst surviving important literature on Form Schoolwas written by Guo Pu (276-324), There are five maintheories in terms of Form - Qi. Wind-water. FourEmblems, Form and Direction (He, 1990), The FormSchool approach considers mountain ridges,surrounding hills, watercourses, locations andorientations as the most important terrestrial andcelestial elements for human dwellings becausethese elements represent both terrestrial andcelestial Qi. These elements comprise the basic

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 61

terms of the Form School approach and are known asthe 'five feng shui geographical secrets', i,e, dragon,sand, water, cave and direction (Lip, 1979):

• dragon - means the mountain ridges to betraced, and represents the topography

• sand - means the enfolding hills and soilcondition, and represents the surroundingenvironment

• water - means the flow of water through orbypassing the site

• cave - or 'feng shui spot' means the nicheposition, and represents the best location

• direction - means the facing direction of the siteand building, and represents the orientation.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGYThe development of a conceptual framework follows theprocedure of the grounded theory approach. Glaser andStrauss (1967) described this approach as the discoveryof theory from data, and emphasized its importance inproviding researchers with predictive understanding,explanations, interpretations and applications, Theprocedures of developing the conceptual framework offeng shui knowledge are as follows:

• review and summarize relevant concepts fromfeng shui knowledge

• develop an appropriate framework for analysis• review trends, patterns and issues in feng shui

principles and theories• reinterpret and develop knowledge hierarchy from

the feng shui perspective in relation to buildingdesign

• integrate the conceptual framework development.

The fundamental concepts of the Form Schoolapproach are first derived from existing principles andpractice. This process follows the procedure ofgrounded theory through the analysis of literature{Mak, 2004). Hence the hierarchies of feng shuiconcepts are identified and constructed in a form ofhierarchical structure utilizing concept hierarchyapproach. Concept hierarchy is used to organizefactual domain knowledge and symbolic structuralknowledge in the form of a generalization hierarchy. Itis a common approach to utilize concept hierarchy for

organizing structural knowledge and constructing theknowledge base because of its efficient mechanismto store and generalize a large body of interrelatedconcepts (Tam, 1993).

FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF THEFORM SCHOOL APPROACHThe five main theories of the Form School approachtogether with the five feng shui geographical secretsare developed into four fundamental concepts of theForm School approach to feng shui knowledge forbuilding design:

• the concept of the feng shui model• the concept of parallelism• the concept of four design modules and• the concept of feng shui design criteria.

CONCEPT OF THE FENG SHUI MODELThe combination of these five feng shui geographicalelements and the four emblems (green dragon, whitetiger, black tortoise and red bird as the four cardinaldirections) produce a classic feng shui model, Thismodel has been interpreted in diagrams of spatialorganization of auspicious mountains and watercoursesin most of the ancient feng shui literature. Many fengshui researchers have summarized these diagrams intoa simplified diagram of a feng shui model as shown inFigure 1 (Shang, 1992; Cheng and Kong, 1993; Han,1995; Yi etal. 1996; He, 1998). This diagram illustratesthe relationships between the key elements of the fivefeng shui geographical secrets being considered andhow dragon vein, four emblems in sand, water feature,cave and bright court, and their directions wereintegrated into a feng shui model.

CONCEPT OF PARALLELISMMost feng shui scholars (Skinner, 1982; Lee, 1986;Xu, 1990) recognized that the theories and practicesof feng shui work in both macrocosm and microcosm.In terms of feng shui, a building is considered anarchitectural as well as a cosmic structure (Lee,1986). Territory on earth is organizationally analogouswith the four quadrants in the celestial sphere. Thesefour quadrants are called azure dragon, red bird,white tiger and black tortoise, and are commonlyknown as the 'four emblems'. Each of these heavenly

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62 M,Y. MAK AND S.T. NG

The Ideal Feng Shui ModelSource: Yi et al. (1996)

1' White

Tiger. (Right)

Dragon(Ridge)

' ' Black ^Tortoise(Back) ,

Sand(Surroundings)

Cave(F«ng SJuji Spot)

'̂ / ' ' ""̂ N /1 1 Ming Tang > '̂Bright Court

\ /^ y

,'' Red ' '1 Bird\ (Front) .

Water

Direction

GreenDragon

. (Left)

\\1

/

Diagram of the Feng Shui Model

FIGURE 1 The feng shui model.Source: Yi et al (1996) and Mak (2004)

quadrants is identified with the regions of east, south,west and north, respectively. This relationship isrecognized as the concept of parallelism in feng shui(Lee, 1986). The concept of a feng shui model notonly applies to landscape and site selection, but canalso be applied to the interior layout of buildings.Therefore, whether it is dealing with physical ortopographical elements, or a housing structure or theproportional relationships of the interior of a house,the same principles and relationships of the feng shuimodel are still applied as shown in Figure 2.

CONCEPT OF FOUR DESIGN MODULESWhen describing the site conditions and the design ofdwellings, most of tha feng shui texts, such as YangZhai Shi Shu {Ten Books on Dwellings of Living),categorized these aspects into outer form and inner

form. According to Lee (1986). the outer form can beidentified as the location of the site, conditions thatsurround the site, topographical conditions of the siteand the shape of the site. The inner form can beidentified as the layout of the building, elevations of thebuilding, and elements of the building. Feng shuischolars Cheng and Kong (1993) explained theapplication of the Form School approach to the designof dwellings and proposed a further classification intofour design modules - surrounding environment,external layout, internal layout and interior arrangement(see Figure 3).

• Surrounding environment. This aspect looks intothe surrounding environment from a geographicalpoint of view. This includes natural elements oftopography, geographical features, mountains.

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 63

A Black TurtleB Red BirdC White TigerD Azure Dragon

c

E

F

B

0

Q"

E Feng Shui SpotF Ming TangG Water MouthG' Gate

FIGURE 2 Correspondence of the four emblems in nature and architecture.Source: adapted from Lee (1986)

Outer Form- Site Selection-House Location-Topographical conditions-Shape of Site

Inner Form- Layouts- Elevations- Elements

^̂

Surrounding Environmsnt

External Layout

^

V

Internal Layout

InteriorArrange-

ment

Outer and Inner Form (Lee, 1986)

FIGURE 3 Four design modules.Source: Mak (2004)

Four Design Modules (Cheng b Kong. 1993)

watercourses, directions, views and man-madestructures of roads and adjacent buildings.External layout. The external layout deals with theexternal shape and exterior space of a building.This includes the shape of the site, geometry ofthe building, open space, entrances, driveways,landscaping and plants.

Internal layout. The internal layout reflectsthe spatial management of a building. Itconsiders the locations and functions of rooms,circulation patterns, and internal elements ofstructure, such as columns and beams,staircases, ceilings, doors and window openings(Rossbach, 1987).

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64 M.Y. MAK AND S.T. NG

TABLE 1 24 key fengSURROUNDINGENVIRONMENT

• Topography

• Front of site

• Rear of site

• Sides of site

• Street location

• Water view

• Wind direction

Source: Mak (2004)

shui criteria lor building designEXTERNALLAYOUT• Shape of site

• Entrance

• Shape of huitding

" Orientation

• Trees

• Pond

INTERNALLAYOUT• Layout

• Doors

• Windows

• Shape of rooms

• Staircase

• Ceiling

INTERIORARRANGEMENT• Door openings

• Bedroom

• Kitchen

• Living room

• Bathroom

# Interior ar rangement. The interior a r rangementaddresses the internal room arrangement andfurn i ture p lacement. It considers the size andproportion of rooms and windows and doors.Furniture placement is a major part of interiorarrangement. In practice, the bed in the bedroom,the stove in the kitchen, the desk in the officeetc. have substantial effects on the use of abuilding (Rossbach, 1987),

CONCEPT OF FENG SHUI DESIGN CRITERIAMost contemporary feng shui scholars (Lip, 1979,1986; Rossbach, 1984, 1987; Lee, 1986; Xu, 1990;Han, 1995; Choy, 1999) have set up their owncriteria for feng shui design. For instance. LeeÍ1986) outlined three basic criteria for architecturaldesign; Xu (1990) derived a four-step landscapemodel to deal with land formations; Han (1995)used 24 major criteria for selection of the bestlocation; Lip (1979, 1986) listed a set of standardrules of thumb for assessment of architecturaldesign; Choy (1999) suggested a 10-point designcriteria checklist for property selection; andRossbach (1984, 1987) provided a set of interiordesign diagrams for furniture placement. Althoughthese criteria, derived from various contemporaryfeng shui scholars, were presented in differentformats, they all follow the principles and practiceof the Form School approach.

Based on these contemporary practices for fengshui design, 24 key criteria are identified (Table 1) and

grouped according to the four design modules asshown in Figure 4,

FENG SHUI DESIGN FRAMEWORKCONCEPT HIERARCHY APPROACHBased on the four fundamental concepts of the FormSchool approach, i.e. the concept of the feng shuimodel, the concept of parallelism, the hierarchy offour design modules, and criteria for feng shuidesign, an overall view of the Form School approachwas provided. It is necessary to integrate these fourfundamental concepts into a single diagrammaticalorganization of the Form School approach as shownin Figure 5. This diagram indicates that these fourfundamental concepts are integrated and interrelated,and no single concept should be considered inisolation. For instance, the concept of the feng shuimodel integrated with the concept of parallelism isreflected in the hierarchy of the four design modules,and the criteria for feng shui design corresponding tothe concepts of the feng shui model is applied to thehierarchy of the four design modules.

Based on the organization of the Form Schoolapproach, it is necessary to formulate a suitableprocess to integrate the four fundamental conceptsof feng shui knowledge, It is recognized that aconcept hierarchy approach provides a powerful wayto represent structural knowledge (Tam, 1993). Usinga concept hierarchy, the relationship between eachpiece of data can be expressed and presented withabstract terms (Lee etal, 1997).

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 65

Layout

LayoutDoors

WindowsShape of rooms

StaircaseCeiling

SurroundingEnvironmentTopographyFront of SiteRear of SiteSides of Site

Street locationWater view

Wind direction

Criteria forFeng Shu!

Design

InteriorArrangement

Door openingsBedroomKitchen

Living roomBathroom

FIGURE 4 Feng shui criteria grouped in four design ntiodules.Source: Mak |2004)

ExternalLayout

Shape of siteEntrance

Shape of buildingOrientation

TreesPond

A concept hierarchy takes the form of ageneralization tree in which the most specificconcepts (concept instances) form the leaves of thetree and the internal nodes represent intermediateconcepts. Each intermediate concept is derived fromgeneralizing concepts residing immediately at the nextlower level. As a result, a path from the root to a leafcorresponds to a sequence of concepts, eachobtained by adding more specific information to theprevious one. Therefore, in a concept hierarchy, aconcept needs only to store information specific toitself.

Construction of a concept hierarchy requiressummarizing and generalizing a knowledge domain;however, it is still an unstructured process that

involves a manual development of the hierarchy(Zupaneia/, 1999), Concept hierarchies can be builtexplicitly by domain experts or knowledgeengineers or extracted from a database usingstructural information and data distribution; theseform the basic sources of the domain knowledge(Lee ei at, 1998), Tam (1993) suggested that toconstruct a concept hierarchy from a set of conceptinstances, the order of the concept instances is themost important feature, especially when thenumber of concept instances is small. The concepthierarchy constructed from the first few conceptinstances W\\\ form the skeleton of the hierarchythat will be expanded by adding the remaininginstances.

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66 M.Y. MAK AND S.T. NG

Form SchoolApproach

FIGURE 5 Organization of the Form School approach.Source: Mak (2004)

HIERARCHIES OF FOUR FUNDAMENTALCONCEPTSWhen constructing a concept hierarchy of the fengshui knowledge structure, the four fundamentalconcepts of the Form School approach are firsttranslated into sets of concept instances representedin a format of hierarchy to indicate the characteristicsand structure within each concept:

• hierarchy of the feng shui model (Figure 6)• hierarchy of the feng shui model for exterior and

interior (Figure 7)

• hierarchy of the four design modules (Figure 8) and• hierarchy of the feng shui design criteria (Figure 9).

SKELETAL HIERARCHICAL STRUCTUREA skeletal hierarchical structure is constructed todemonstrate the interrelationships between the fourfundamental concepts of the Form School approach.These four fundamental concepts are first representedin a format of hierarchy and are then integrated to forma skeletal structure of the hierarchy of the feng shuiknowledge (Figure 10)- Primarily, the hierarchy of thefour design modules (Figure 8) outlines the skeletal

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 67

1\

WhiteTiger

(Right)

Dragon(Ridge)

' Black '' Tortoise^ (Back) /

Cave(Feng Shuj Sp

I ^ ^1 / ^1 1 Ming Tang

i Bright Court\ '

Water

^ •"- — " " N

Red Bird(Front)

\ '

Direction

Sand(Surroundings)

ot)1\

/ 'S

GreenDragon(Left)

Simplified Diagram of the Feng Shui Model

FIGURE 6 Hierarchy of the feng shui model.Source: Mak (2004)

FengShui

Model

Dragon

Sand

Water

Back(Black

Tortoise)

Sides(Green

Dragon - Left,and White

Tiger - Right)

Cave(Inc. Bright

Court)

Front(Red Bird)

Direction

Simplified Hierarchy of the Feng Shui Model

structure of the hierarchy. The hierarchy of feng shuiknowledge is first classified into outer and inner forms,and then categorized into four design modules - thesurrounding environment, the external layout, theinternal layout and the interior arrangement. Eachdesign module is connected to a feng shui modelbecause the concept of parallefism implies that thisfeng shui model applies to the exterior as well as theinterior (Figure 7). The concept of the feng shui modelIS incorporated with the hierarchy of feng shui designcriteria which are grouped according to the four designmodules (Figure 9).

After the skeletal hierarchical structure of the fengshui knowledge is created, the overall hierarchical

structure of feng shui knowledge can be derived indetail to show further integration of the fourfundamental concepts of the Form School approach(Mak, 2004; Mak etal, 2005). The overall hierarchy hasmore information and more elegant shape than that ofthe first hierarchy which only provides a skeletalhierarchy; the overall hierarchy tends to result in amore successful generalization process (Lee ei al,1998). Fof instance, in each design module, thehierarchy of the feng shui model can be organized indetail with the combination of the five geographicalsecrets and the four emblems theory as shown inFigure 6. The relationship between these attributes isthen reviewed and connected to the relevant feng shui

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68 M.Y. MAK AND S.T. NG

A

C

E

F

B

D

G'1 1

i\

White ^Tiger

(RighO ^

DrsgonIRIdg*)

^ 78¡ckT .^^Cava

(Fang Shui Sp

' MingTaDg

' Red Bird\ (Front)

s •'

Watar

Direction

ot)/\

Green 'Dragon

(Lsft)/\

WhileTiger

(Righll _

Dragon(RMga)

l' Black ^Tortoise

' (Back) ,

Cava(Fang Shui Sp

) ' ' ' ^ ^/MingTar>g\Brtght Court

/

/ Rad Bird\ (Front)

V /

W M n

'~ '

DIrMtlon

S*nd(Surrounding

«t|1\

/GreenDragon

^ ll-oft)

1

)

Feng Shui Model for Exterior

FIGURE 7 Hierarchy of the feng shui model for exterior and interior

Feng Sfiui Model for Interior

criteria in the sarTie design module to construct theoverall hierarchical structure. This hierarchical structurewill be further developed to incorporate specific designconditions related to each of the feng shui criteria.

A questionnaire survey of architects in Sydney andHong Kong was used to evaluate the four fundamentalconcepts of the Form School approach and thedeveloped hierarchical structure of the conceptual

framework. The results of the survey demonstratedthat these fundamental concepts and the conceptualframework are accepted by architects (Mak. 2004),Overall, there was very strong correlation between thegroups of architects in Sydney and Hong Kongnotwithstanding the fact that they have very differentcultural, educational and geographical backgrounds(Mak and Ng, 2005).

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 69

Outer InnerForm Form

Surrounding Environment

External Layout

Internai Layout

InteriorArrange-

mentFeng Shui

Design

Outer Form

Inner Form

FIGURE 8 Hierarchy of the four design modules.Source: Mak (2004)

SurroundingEnvironment

InternalLayout

InteriorArrangement

IntarnilLayotil

UavoutDoors

WindowsShape of rooms

StaircasaCeiling

Surround ingEnvlronmantTopographyFront of iltBRear of srleSides of sita

Street locationWater view

Wind direction

InteriorArrtngemant

Door openingsBedroomKitchen

Living roomBathroom

ExternalLayout

Shape of siteEntrance

Shape of buitdingOrientation

Tre«*Pond

forFeng ShuiEvaluition

SurrmindlngEnvironnMnt

ExtamalLayout

Topography

Front of site

Rsar of alta

Sides of Bite

Streetlocation

Water view

Winddirection

IntamalLayout

InteriorArrangement

Layout

Door«

Windows

Shapoofroom a

Staircaae

Ceiling

Shape of sue

Entrance

Shape oftiuHding

OrlentMkin

Troee

Por>d

Dooropening»

Bedroom

Küchen

Living room

Bathroom

FIGURE 9 Hierarchy of the feng shui design criteria.Source: Mak (2Q04|

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70 M.Y, MAK AND S.T. NG

Feng ShuiDesign

Evaiuation

Surround-ing

Environ-ment

InternaiLayout

Topogrpahy-Front of site-Rear of site-Sides of sita-Streetlocation

-Water-Winddirection

-Shape ofland

-Entrance-Shape ofbuilding

-Orientation-Trees-Pond

- Layout-Doors-Windows-Shape ofrooms

-Staircase-Ceiiing

-Dooropening

-Bedroom-Kitchen-Living roonfi-Bathroom

Concept of Four Design ModulesConcept of the

Feng Shui Model

FIGURE 10 Skeletal hierarchical structure of feng shui knowledge.Source: Mak ei a/(2005)

Concept ofFeng Shui

Criteria

CONCLUSIONSBuilding design is recognized as a very complex andintuitive process. Architects use their knowledge

accumulated from intuition and past experiences tomake heuristic design decisions. These characteristicsare similar to the Chinese philosophy of direct insight

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Feng shui: an alternative framework for complexity in design 71

into the nature and principles and practices of fengshui as applied in ancient Chinese architecture. It issuggested that interpreting feng shui knowfedgewould enable the development of an alternativedesign frameworic from this Chinese architecturaldiscipline. In particular, the Form School provides aholistic approach that allows integrated componentsand elements to be considered for the builtenvironment. However, due to a lack of properlydocumented feng shui principles and guidelines, it isdifficult for architects to apply the knowledge of fengshui in further enhancing their design. There is a needto establish a more structured code of practice forfeng shui application before the theories can bewidely spread and adopted.

Although the principles and practices of the FormSchool approach provide a broad understanding offeng shui knowledge, a systematic development ofthe four fundamental concepts and a hierarchicalstructure of feng shui knowledge have never beenestablished. In this paper, the authors are using theknowledge elicitation and representation techniquesto establish a more structured framework of fengshui, and the results may help to improve theawareness and usage of this ancient wisdom forbuilding design.

AUTHOR CONTACT DETAILSMichael Mak (corresponding author): School of Architecture andBuilt Environment, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia.Tel: +612 4921 7450, fax: +612 4921 6913, e-mail:M ichael- Mak@newcastle. ed u.auS. Thomas Ng: Department of Civil Engineering, University ofHong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.

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