Thursday, September 20, 2007

Fengshui Master Or Fengshui Monster, In The Eye Of An Architect


Imagine, after 5 years of architectural education, another 5 years of working experience as an architectural assistant and another countless of years to be a full fledged Architect, your design, surprisingly, was dictated by a so called Fengshui Master. It is even more ironical to have your client knock on you and asked to redesign your architectural masterpiece countless more time because the client couldn't jive in the numerous contradictory suggestions by the so called Fengshui Masters, for reasons they are from different schools and the Client is greedy enough to consolidates all their advises into 1 meaningful approach - impossible?

Next, the client spend a fortune investing in a piece of land worth millions with beautiful views to the lake, to be later advised by the Fengshui Master, that the location is inauspicious because it does not fulfilled the huge SanYuan principle of Zhen and Ling water position. What? A wall was suggested instead of the huge beautiful scenery of the site.

Again, assigning of the rooms to the residents to to be strictly adhered to even though it makes no logical sense in terms of spatial and usable space arrangement, resulting in narrow, squeezed corridors and lopsided room. Imagine carrying your meals from the kitchen to the dining via other spaces because the kitchen must conformed to so and so location? Furthermore, all the door sizes are of different sizes, not conforming to the standard but the Fengshui Ruler.

Last but not least, incorporation of Fengshui artifacts as part of the your architecture resulting in a house looking like an ordinary Chinese Temple. Gone are the so called modern movement, post-modernism, deconstruction and minimalist approach in the architectural lingua.

Is this a Fengshui Master or a Fengshui Monster.

That is not all, in the Fengshui circle itself, these masters cannot see eye to eye with one another, because they are not from the same lineage. What? In the contemporary scene, these masters are concealing under the banners of academies, which may not function as one, bad mouthing each others, or even better off, hiring 3rd parties to jibe one another. I believed, if the Fengshui forefathers liken to GM Yang, GM Jiang or GM Lai, were to be alived, they will tears in gallons for the state of Fengshui Master today. It only fortifies what the ancient Chinese say about this profession, Fengshui master con people 10 years, 8 years. There may be truth after all.

It has not come to a stage, when there are governing bodies that look after the conducts and ethics of professional Fengshui Master liked the Architects and Engineers. At the moment there are more crooks then nobleman out there to prey on the rich and famous. If you are not rich enough don't even think of engaging one or rather take up a course in Fengshui, you just not had enough karma or better off, affinity to learn this art. If you are not famous enough, you cannot qualify to be a good Fengshui master. You must drive a 5 series to be like one.

It is just this drive of meeting too much Fengshui Monsters that resulted in me indulging in this arts and to finally find out that the Arts is noble, the academies are just there to dish out theories, you need to seek out the real non glamorous Teacher to walk the dragon with you for its applications and the famous one to Con you.

No offense to others, these are my thoughts on Fengshui Masters and Fengshui Monsters.

Ar. David Yek Tak Wai

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Somehow,i do agree with you on this subject

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