Doors Open To Feng Shui

Tired? Creatively blocked? Unmotivated? Perhaps your surroundings are stifling the positive flow of your ch'i. Maybe what you need is a feng shui overhaul.

Feng shui (pronounced fung-SHWAY) is an ancient Eastern system of placing objects and molding one's surroundings to enhance well-being. Applied in the home, office, or even the garden, it is meant to foster creativity, create better relationships, bring luck, and generally harmonize one's existence with the metaphysical realm.

With the help of the East Hampton architect Eva Growney, feng shui has found a home in homes along the South Fork. Ms. Growney has incorporated its precepts into her house designs and interior designs for some 15 years, and she even makes house calls for consultations and blessings. Her clients have included a famous diet doctor, an Amagansett actress, assorted musicians, and all types in between.

Tweak The Forces

"Everything in the universe is made of energy," Ms. Growney explained. "On the simplest level, we have the powers of positive and negative energy, which can also be male and female, black and white. . . . One of the key components of feng shui has to do with the balance of both energies."

Basically, the architect said, the goal is to "tweak the positive forces" of a space.

That can be as practical as placing a lamp on the right table or as involved as an hour-and-a-half ritual blessing. It can involve an area as small as a study or as large as an entire property.

Meaningful Spaces

Feng shui traces back 4,000 years to when ancient Easterners carefully sited burial plots and their crops and farm sites to promote harmony with their geographic surroundings. It soon developed into a system for everyday life, one that incorporates fundamentals of Taoism and Buddhism - things like rituals, meditation, the I Ching, the yin yang.

"It has so much to do with the human psyche," said Ms. Growney, who practices what is known as Black Hat Sect Tantric Buddhist feng shui. "It addresses things that we need physically as well as psychically."

Besides spatial orientations, colors, and objects such as crystals and flutes are also thought to have enhancing effects.

Eight Aspects Of Life

So, then, how do all these metaphysical concepts apply themselves to a seemingly mundane concept like interior design? Feng shui actually provides a relatively tangible tool. It's called the ba-gua, an octagonal diagram whose points represent eight aspects of life: family, knowledge, fame, offspring, helpful people, career, marriage, and wealth.

Superimposed over a room plan, floor plan, or map, the ba-gua provides a guide for orienting the space with those life aspects in mind.

Ms. Growney's own office on Toilsome Lane was arranged with the ba-gua in mind. A lush painting of fish is placed in what the ba-gua dictates as the wealth or "abundance" corner, for example. Paintings of faroff places are grouped in the helpful people/ travel corner and examples of her better house designs are displayed in the career corner.

Other ideas were applied to the space, including the painting of the walls in black, green, and yellow tones - "colors of abundance and growth," the architect said. "If this is a room of knowledge, there should be fresh knowledge sprouting."

Earth's Emporium

Ms. Growney has designed entire houses using feng shui, including two in Springs and one in the estate section of Southampton Village. She has also incorporated its precepts into other, more traditional designs in Water Mill and on Shelter Island. Some businesses, like the metaphysical bookstores in Sag Harbor and Southampton, have called on Ms. Growney's talent.

In fact, the best example of the architect's work and the one most solidly based on feng shui is the interior design of Anne Harper's Earth's Emporium in Amagansett. From the carpet leading in from the front door to the massive yin yang in the center of the floor, the store is a breathing example of feng shui design.

Ms. Growney remembers when Ms. Harper, who is a friend of hers, called her in for a consultation. "It was horrible, and I think she will kind of admit it," said the architect. "When you went in, it was a mess. The arrangement of everything kept blocking the energy everywhere."

Out Came The Ba-Gua

The task turned to rearranging the entire layout of the store. Out came the ba-gua. In the knowledge corner went the store's collection of spiritual and health-oriented books, in the fame corner (directly opposite the entrance) Ms. Growney placed a large mirror and a space for displaying the merchandise Ms. Harper chooses to highlight.

The register and sales desk were moved toward the center of the floor, being the heart of business. Behind it, in the offspring corner, the vitamins and supplements Ms. Harper has recently incorporated were placed - "a child of her interests," said Ms. Growney.

Directly across the room items in the store's health food selection were chosen to occupy the family/health corner.

Writer Unblocked

One of Ms. Growney's most recent clients was an actress, whom she chose not to name, who divides her time between an apartment in Los Angeles and an oceanfront house in Amagansett.

"She was having trouble writing a book she is working on," Ms. Growney said. "She had been having writer's block for months and months - she was starting to panic."

The architect visited the Amagansett house, performed a ritual blessing, and suggested only a few general changes, such as covering a mirror in front of the bed and breaking up a long hallway with a cloth halfway down and a crystal to disperse energy. But it was what Ms. Growney did for the actress's work space in L.A. that did wonders for her troubles.

"She faxed me a layout of her work room," said the architect, who sent back a long list of suggestions. "She did all the things I told her, and a day later she called me crying. As soon as she put the chair up to the desk again she said it all flowed. She wrote for a couple days straight."

Trump And Johnson

Ms. Growney has also designed gardens for notables such as Chuck Scarborough and the famous diet doctor Bob Atkins, who has a house in Water Mill. With the Far Eastern version of a doctor's bag, the architect also makes house calls. She will visit for a consultation or perform a house blessing, complete with an altar, offerings, and participation by the whole family.

The architect, who also lectures and writes articles on feng shui, recently lectured to design students at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. The fact that a by-the-books art school like Pratt would be interested in a metaphysical system like feng shui is just one indication that the practice is becoming more widely embraced, the architect said.

Even the megadeveloper Donald Trump and the well-known architect Philip Johnson are said to have called in a feng shui consultant to advise on Trump's new luxury tower going up by Columbus Circle.

"Here is a proponent of strict modernism and the glitziest developer on earth, who is completely on the Earth plane, more in the mundane world, both using a feng shui expert," Ms. Growney said.

"Now it's being taught in mainstream universities," she added. "It's not just an esoteric, holistic, hoopla thing. It's being embraced because it's sound."