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THE TERM FENG SHUI might be more commonly associated today with wind chimes than good design, but this ancient Chinese art of manipulating the energies in our homes and offices to achieve prosperity is, in fact, very much about design and placement. When Chinese farmers were first settling the land, their fortunes were inextricably linked to the forces of nature. Positioning their home in an advantageous site was the key to their survival; even today individuals and businesses in China don't make a move without carefully considering the feng shui implications. If a feng shui master says a poorly positioned toilet is flushing away wealth, changes are made regardless of cost.
With feng shui ideology beginning to filter into Western culture, I. D. asked Alex Stark, a Yale-trained architect and feng shui consultant in New York City, to assess five iconic houses of 2oth-century architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry. Did these architects, who have been so influential on the material world, also get it right on a cosmic level?
Stark explains that a feng shui analysis is a bit like an MRI: You slice it many different ways to get a clear picture. The first portent of a successful house is a firm balance between the earth as the foundation and the sky as the fundamental power source. How an architect gestures toward each is key. Feng shui also examines the implications of orientation-not only how to maximize sunlight and control dampness, but also how subtler forms of energy can be brought in from the eight points of the compass. The energy of thunder cones from the east, for instance, and is associated with ancestry, new beginnings and entrepreneurship.
Internally, eight areas of the house relate to the central aspects of life: fame, marriage, children, helpful people, career, knowledge, family and wealth. These areas are determined by plotting the ba-gua, an octagonal shape, from the entryway of a structure. Feng shui masters also measure the balance of yin and yang in a space-yin being passive energy and yang being active. If you want long-term prosperity, Stark says, the optimal ratio is three parts yang to two parts yin.
Here's Stark's analysis of how...