<i> Feng Shui</i> : Going With the Flow
After purchasing property four years ago for a home they will begin building next spring, Greg and Ling Chung of Orange brought in a feng shui master to assure the house will have the harmonious environment they want. “You choose a master who is someone you like and can believe in,” Ling Chung says.
In her case, the feng shui master is a Los Angeles businessman who also consults on the ancient art that is based on the idea that people can maximize energy and good fortune by aligning buildings, doors and furniture with the environment.
The notion of feng shui, which means “wind and water,” reflects the belief that the energy of the Earth and the sky can be controlled to enhance one’s environment. “If you don’t have (good) feng shui, you can create (it) by how you plan the environment,” explains Chung, who is an abstract artist. “The energies unleashed can influence what you are thinking and what you are doing.”
Chung’s concerns were health and energy, and her quest was for a peaceful, harmonious environment. “Everyday life is challenging. That is particularly true for immigrants,” says Ling, who arrived here with her husband from Taiwan 16 years ago.
Before she started planning the house, Ling Chung attended a lecture on feng shui. She admits she is more concerned about it than her husband, who is an aerospace engineer. Her Chinese friends believe in it to varying degrees.
The couple hired Ron Yeo, a Corona del Mar architect, to design the house. Yeo came up with a design for a hillside home with 3,500 square feet of living space and an art studio of almost 2,000 square feet.
Yeo says his original designs were modified because of the feng shui master’s advice.
“They gave us a 12-degree spread for the direction the front door would face,” he explains. In accordance with feng shui, the house will have a chevron shape, its wings embracing the distant mountains. One wing will be the art studio. The orientation also happened to provide the best views, although Chung says view wasn’t a factor in the orientation of the house.
She says a ceiling beam in the master bedroom should not run down the center of the bed between the husband and wife, and the stairway should not face the front door or good luck would skitter down the stairway and out the door.
Lillian Lesefko of Laguna Beach who consults in feng shui says, “Negative energy travels in a straight line and positive energy flows. If the negative moves too quickly, it takes the good stuff with it.”
For balance and contrast, the interior design of the Chung house will blend contemporary design with traditional Chinese furniture. Colors will be light and neutral in some areas and heavy and dark in others.
While local developers aren’t likely to employ feng shui masters when planning new housing tracts, some of them are anticipating the concerns of Asian buyers in their designs, says Dana Eggerts of Creative Design Consultants in Costa Mesa, who designs interiors for model homes throughout California.
In targeting buyers, Eggerts says developers are sensitive to the symbolism of certain colors: Black is the color of celebration in many Asian cultures, while white is used for funerals. And the “den” or “office” is marketed to the Asian community as “the grandmother’s room.”
Kevin and Susan Coleman of Costa Mesa took a three-bedroom house, tore down most of it and created a 5,000-square-foot showplace with five bedrooms and seven baths. The home is modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Chicago, which was built in 1929. The clean linear lines and the roof of flat concrete tile are contemporary, but have a hint of Oriental design.
The house is decorated with a blend of contemporary items, Japanese artifacts and art objects. A set of 16th-Century Japanese armor shares the living room with a stuffed peacock, abstract paintings, a stone fireplace and leather couches and chairs in a stunning shade of blue-green. French doors in that room open directly onto a deck and koi pond.
Two Japanese kimonos make attractive wall decorations in the Coleman home. One is a wedding kimono in an elaborate red, gold, silver and white brocade. The other, dark green outside and pale green inside, was a gift from Kevin Coleman’s sensei, or martial arts instructor.
The Colemans call one bedroom in their house the Japanese bedroom. The feeling of the room is one of tranquility. Guests must remove their shoes before entering, which provides an opportunity for bare or stockinged feet to feel the soft and pleasing texture of the straight-grain fir floor. Coleman cut the wood and installed the tongue-and-groove floor.
The floor and a large oak dresser have a natural finish. The bed is a futon, covered with a black and white bedspread with just a splash of red, the only real color in the room. The walls are painted a soft gray and shoji screens (sliding doors with wood frames covered with paper) conceal a sliding glass door, windows and a closet. Atop the dresser sits Coleman’s collection of Japanese swords, some hundreds of years old.
Their home is part of “the way,” Kevin Coleman says. “I’ve always appreciated the purity and . . . the respect and the balance that (the Japanese) believe in, in their design, in their ‘creativeness’ of landscaping.”
Over the years, Coleman, who is a real estate developer and builder, says he’s noticed that the American style of designing buildings seems to be “bigger is better.” But with the Japanese way, he says, “there’s more respect to learn that one flower is just as beautiful as 100 flowers, if you take the time to see the beauty in that one flower.”
Japanese culture is provoking new stylistic combinations that work well with the contemporary look, say Orange County designers.
“I use the simple style,” says designer Lisa Weber of Fullerton, who lived in Japan. “There’s a lot of geometric form. Everything is fairly linear, with few curlicues.”
Decoration in the Japanese-style home can be as simple as a fresh flower on a table. “It sets the tone,” Weber says.
Weber believes one feature of Japanese-designed homes should be adopted in places such as Orange County where land is expensive and houses are shrinking. “The Japanese use each room for several purposes. The rooms are used around the clock. That way they need a lot less house,” she says. “It’s very efficient.”
Particularly efficient are the bedrooms, where deep cupboards are designed to accommodate stacks of futons. When members of the extended family or friends visit, Weber says, “they just pull out another futon.”
