The Balance of Feng Shui
By Julia Richardson, Photographs by Howard Choy

Howard Choy, a Chinese-born Australian and feng shui practitioner, is softly spoken but fervent. Over tea he deftly lifts the concept of feng shui clear of little mirrors and positions it firmly within the context of modern architectural arguments.

“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. “They used to build streets according to the way people walked, following the goat tracks or the horse tracks. The horse and the goat don’t walk straight up the hill; they walk around it, they meander. The Chinese say that curvilinear movements have feeling, have affection. Straight lines have no affection.”

Howard first became interested in feng shui when working on a project in Hong Kong with an Australian architectural firm. The company had designed a typically efficient modern hospital comprising two very tall towers. When the plans were put before the public, there was an uproar.

“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.”

Initially, Howard’s feng shui clients were Asian families who had come to Australia as part of the business migration scheme. In the last few years though, Howard estimates 80 percent of his clients are Anglo-Australians.

“One reason for this is the exposure of Australians to feng shui because of Chinese immigration,” he says. “The second reason is that a lot of Australians have got this romantic relationship with anything that’s Eastern. They have a perception that it’s mysterious and exotic, and they’re curious about it. The third is simply that feng shui works in most situations.”

Much is made of the feng shui practice of ‘reading’ the landscape and manipulating structures to maximise the flow of qi, but Howard suggests that the importance placed on human qi is what makes feng shui so pertinent to contemporary society.

“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. “When a couple come to me and ask me to do an extension, it is a ritual: they are going into a second stage of their lives. They are thinking, perhaps, four or five years down the track their children will each be needing a room, the family will need more space. So it’s not just a building, because 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.

The popularity of feng shui has led to a proliferation of feng shui practitioners, though not all are as well qualified as Howard Choy. The Feng Shui Society of Australia (FSSA), of which Howard is vice president, is committed to ensuring the integrity of feng shui. Call the FSSA on 02 9810 0162 for further information on feng shui and for details of registered practitioners across Australia.