Feng Shui Building Design Project

After one semester’s research about Feng Shui, I decided to adopt some of the basic knowledge of Feng Shui in to a design project. Feng Shui as a design strategy has been largely practiced in both private and public construction. I stared my project with an analysis of each kind:

           Private Housing

•       Wealth provided by Feng Shui

•       Happiness provided by Feng Shui

•       Interaction with a small group of people

•       Private Space

•       Smaller land

•       Smaller Amount of Funding

     Public Commercial Building

•       Wealth provided by Feng Shui

•       Happiness provided by Feng Shui

•       Interaction with a large number of people

•       Public and Private Space

•       Larger Land

•       Larger Amount of Funding

By adopting Feng Shui rules in design benefits both private housing and public building in terms of the wealth and happiness people could get by occupying the buildings. However, private housing has interaction with a smaller group people in private spaces where as public building interact with a larger group in both private and public spaces. Moreover, public construction aquires larger land and more funding. Therefore, public Commercial Building has more potential in adopting the design strategy of Feng Shui.

Site Information:


Soon, I decided on a public commercial building for my design project. The first question is where to site my building. Considering the Feng Shui of the city, my narrowed down my choice to cities with mountains and water. Finally, I chose Seattle due to the existence of many lakes and mountains, and the beautiful undulating terrains. The site is at 802 Seneca St. The site is at the central business district, having enough flow of people for a commercial building. It is also situated in a health environment with abundant green plants. Moreover, Having water (river/stream) passing through from the south is auspicious for the site. In urban area, the main road can represent the water. In this case, the Interstate 5 Express is a perfect replacement of water.

Site Analysis: 

• At this site, the northeast is the highest; the northwest is lowest; and the south is 2.5m higher than the north.
• The main entrance should face the main roads. Thus the side near the main roads is front, the side close to research center is back.
•  In Feng Shui theory, the front is element Yang (+); the back is Yin (-). In terms of direction, the south is Yang; the North is Yin.
• According to Feng Shui rules, the south side should not be higher then the north side; the back also should no be lower then the front. In this case, we could raise the north side up to the same height as the south side. 

Programs:

This commercial building includes the following programs: a parking lot, a café, stops, a gallery, restaurants, offices and a bookstore. Here is an analysis of the each program according to the 5-element theory in Feng Shui. The analysis has two groups. The first group assigns different programs with different materials base on the material reference in 5-element theory, whereas the second group bases the programs on the color schema.

Compositions of the Programs and Shapes of the Building:

The next step was to locate each program into the building. I started by mapping each program also based on the orientation analysis of the 5-element theory. When placing the mass onto the site, I oriented and transformed each program to fit the site. Then, I made 3D diagrams that presented possible shapes of the building according to the auspicious shapes in Feng Shui theory.

Development of Building:

Now, we have the programs, orientations, colors, materials all based on the 5-element theory. In order to achieve a good Feng Shui construction in the urban area, we need to add the benevolent features (discussed in my previous article) to the building, such as, gardens, waterfalls and plazas. Due to the limited size of our site, I decided to at green plants to the building. The following diagram show my strategy to maximize the green space in the building.

Building Plans, Sections and Renderings: 

In my previous article, Old and New, I have listed some destructive features and benevolent features of the urban construction. A potential building shape appears in the diagram with the maximized green space. However, buildings with sharp edges would be considered as having destructive features that ruin the Feng Shui in the neighborhood. Thus, I replaced this destructive feature with another benevolent feature: round shape. Here are some renderings of the final version of the building.

Sections and Plans: