Fengshui landscape cosmology
What it is
Fengshui ("wind and water") is the Chinese art of siting tombs, houses, temples and whole cities in harmony with the flow of qi across a landscape of hills, water and the cardinal directions. Classic doctrine favours a south-facing site sheltered by higher ground to the north, with watercourses to the front, and aligns buildings on a north-south axis. From burial siting it expanded into a comprehensive geomancy applied to settlement layout and capital planning. It supplied the orientation logic behind the central axis and four-sided enclosure of Chinese cities and courtyard houses.
Why it matters
Fengshui furnished a cosmological rationale for urban orientation and siting that shaped the axis, enclosure and aspect of Chinese settlements for two millennia and still informs property practice across East Asia.
Plans it shaped
- Chang’an (Tang Capital) (7th c.)
- Heian-kyō (Kyoto) (794)
- Suzhou (Canal-Garden City) (Song era, c. 1100)
- Hangzhou (Southern Song Capital) (1138)
- Dadu (Yuan Beijing) (1267)
- Pingyao (1370)
- Ming Beijing / Forbidden City (1406–1420)
- Edo (Tokugawa Capital) (1590–1868)
- Han Chang'an (c. 200 BCE–8 CE)
- Luoyang (Northern Wei Capital) (c. 493–534 CE)
- Zhengzhou Shang City (Shangcheng) (c. 1600 BCE)
- Anyang / Yin (Yinxu, Shang Capital) (c. 1250 BCE)