“A lot of modern architects are concerned with how the building looks and they don’t think in terms of spaces. It’s like this cup,” he says. “The Chinese say the usefulness of the cup is not in the solid part; it is in the empty part.”

At its most complex, Feng Shui requires a comprehensive study of Chinese astrology, familiarity with the ancient ‘compass’ called the luopan, as well as an understanding of the principles of Yin and Yang, the Eight trigrams and the Five Elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. In its simplest theoretical terms, Feng Shui is the study of Qi (pronounced ch’i), the positive energy that flows through all living things. Sheng Qi (or life-giving energy) is said to travel in curved lines while the Sha Qi (destructive energy) is said to move in straight lines.

All Pictures: Howard Choy renovated this Sydney home incorporating the principles of Feng Shui. The garage doors were clad in timber to soften their impact and curved walls were installed wherever possible.

 

“If you look at old towns, they’ve got these beautiful meandering roads,” says Howard. The Chinese say that curvilinear movements have feeling, have affection. Straight lines have no affection.”

 

“The whole of the local Chinese community were up in arms. They stopped the entire project,” he recalls. “They reckoned it was bad Feng Shui because it looked like a couple of tablets, a couple of gravestones. So we had to redesign the hospital as six blocks of low-rise buildings instead of two towers. And I thought: wow, this stuff is pretty amazing if it can stop a whole government project.”

 

Feng Shui is represented by two classical schools, though Howard claims that modern practitioners draw on both disciplines. The Compass School, formalised in around 860AD, sought a more mathematical, more academic approach to Feng Shui, focussing on the astrology of the inhabitants of the building.

The Form School is more concerned with the physical flow of qi. “The Chinese think the home is like the centre of the universe,” explains Howard, “and that every time you walk outside your home, you’re in chaos. When you come home, you are protected, it is your nest. If that home does not cuddle you, ‘assemble energy’ for you, then it’s not doing its job.”

“Feng Shui says that a house should be appropriate for the given space and time and that the human Qi is very important. When you design something you have to take into consideration the energy of the land and the energy of the people – and that makes sense to me,” says Howard.

“People don’t realise that when we build something, we are in actual fact building our lives,” he continues. “The building and the people are intimately related.”

The logic of the argument is hard to fault, yet conventional Western thinking continues to baulk at the suggestion that a building can influence the fortunes of its inhabitants. It might, however, just be an issue of semantics: change the terms and suggest instead that a building can affect a person’s mood, which can influence their behaviour. Their behaviour can determine the success of their personal and professional relationships – and the credibility of the theory is restored.