The Principle of Cul De Sac And Sucking Egg

The Neo Urbanism movement has in favour of bringing back the community to scale, opposite of the megalomaniac principle of modernism where size does matter. In the discourse of modern urban design principle, we toyed around the 2 principle ideas of urban form one called the fine grain and the other as the coarse grain. Fine grains are found mostly in traditional town such as Kyoto and ShengYang where the fine grains are reflected to the scale of the roof against the height of the built forms which centralised on the human scale as a reference point. Whereas the coarse grains are modern solutions to our modern problem of congestion, over population and scarcity of land, in which these fine grain towns are stacked up vertically in forms of high rise mega structure with complex networks of roads, flyovers and vertical mapping, called plugs in and plugs out.

The failure of modern urban design principle in addressing the issue of human scale has paved way to the ideology of Neo Urbanism, where the human scale becomes the vital yard stick in examining urban design components such as landmarks, gateways, plaza, edge, nodes and paths are instituted to the right size of a human scale before it is implemented. One product that has signified such an arrival in Malaysia is reflected in Putrajaya, the new administrative capital to Kuala Lumpur.

In the course of my work in Valencia Sungai Buloh, one principle of Neo Urbanism that I find practical is cul-de-sac which give birth to clustered residential with ample parks and pathways clustered liked organic cells, hugging the contours, each manifesting its own identity as a community beacon with huge potentials to grow itself to another community as an entire organism of human inhabitants. In reality only the rich can afford such a dwelling in such a community. It is only the non Architectural trained FengShui master that makes an issue to such wonderful urban solutions by saying it is a sickle formation, therefore very bad Sha Qi – what a disgrace!

What is a sickle formation? Roads that wrap around the cul-de-sac are similar to rivers that wrap around an island and at the concave side of the roads or rivers are deemed to be cut by the sickle, where this is called sickle formation. This is crap!

Second, if there are fewer vehicles, the sickle formation will be less effective. This is another crap! Qi does not travel in car, as Qi does not have a valid driving license. When wind moves, Qi moves. When Qi stop, water coagulates.

Third, in the cul-de-sac formation, there may be a bright hall as the island park. The classics say, bright hall eliminate Sha Qi. So where is the sickle formation?

Fourth, if the sickle is nowhere to be found, how about the pulling nose or piercing heart ShaQi for the unit facing the incoming road that either flow out or flowing in? A pulling nose formation is where water is flowing outward from the main door of the unit in question. Whereas, piercing heart is where water is flowing in directed towards the main door of the unit in question. Answer, these are craps again as the bright hall filters out the unnecessary ShaQi, if any. So what is wrong with a cul-de-sac clustered community, FengShui wise?

Fifth, units facing the water gates are deemed less auspicious based on the premise that water gates must be locked, so that Qi will not disperse. Another less noble saying is that, it is not pleasant to face a property at the ass of the neighbourhood. However such minor concerns can easily be taken cared of by placing what designer called neighbourhood beacons as gateways. So, there is really no fuss at all.

Imagine, getting a FengShui master to teach Architect and Urban Designer to deal with the sickle ShaQi problem is liked teaching them to suck eggs? This is absolutely unwarranted. Worst, if one has to pay a premium for the art of egg sucking, such notion is unimaginable.

Good luck to the egg suckers…