It thrusts, it jabs, it points. It’s manic, antic, sharp-elbowed and loud.
The Frederic C. Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum is, simply, in your face, and in the facades of its architectural neighbors: the Denver Public Library, the original art museum building, the Museum Residences condominiums, Civic Center and, well, most of downtown’s tall buildings.
The new wing brings vitality and zest, and a lot of energetic baggage to its swath of the city, say experts in feng shui, an ancient Chinese approach to design.
The wing is “very stimulating for the brain. The light is extraordinary. Take a few steps and you have a whole new view,” says Cynthia Murray, a Boulder feng shui practitioner who travels the country consulting about feng shui. “Your senses are heightened. You stay on alert.”
The practice of feng shui argues that when objects are arranged properly, space is in harmony with nature and almost electric with positive energy, which can bring about success, health and happiness. Poor arrangement of space, on the other hand, will foster failure, illness and sorrow.
Traditional feng shui considers shape, color and directions on the compass as well as astrology. More contemporary forms often neglect astrology and compass points.
Walking around the Daniel Libeskind-designed wing, Murray pointed toward one of the museum’s dart-like prows, its tip poised just yards away from a penthouse apartment’s living space. “That’s going to be a problem for the people who are there. That’s unfortunate. Those are called poison arrows, and the closer to the shape they are, the worse.”
If left unresolved, the people subject to the shiny spike may begin to feel they are under attack, and then they may become ill, Murray says.
“You feel constantly on the defensive,” she says. “It weakens you. It’s like talking with someone who always wants to point in your face.”
To which skeptics – and they are legion – would retort “nonsense.” Feng shui, they say, is a jumble of superstitious claptrap.
Defense possible
With bad feng shui, says Boulder consultant and clinical psychologist Mary Hartnett, “people can start to get ailments in the part of their body where the point is pointing. If it’s a business, the business can start to fail.”
Hopeless? No. The monied set moving into the Museum Residences , and inheriting its problematic relationship with the new wing’s brassiness, can fight back.
Plants will absorb the aggressive energy, called sha, experts say. And mirrors and other objects can direct the energy back toward the museum.
In addition to using plants and mirrors, people in Hong Kong also hang scissors in their windows to cut sha directed toward their homes and workplaces.
Despite the wing’s chins-out disposition, Murray says it is “surprisingly causing less aggression toward the other buildings than I expected.”
And after she spent an hour walking around the building and through it, she said she has a “fondness” for it, a response she did not expect.
“It’s just trying to do its thing,” she says. “There’s $110 million in juice behind this building. It got itself made.”
“Center of power”
Elsa Jewett, a Denver practitioner of an Americanized school of feng shui called “Form feng shui,” studied the building for a few days shortly after it opened, and remains impressed by its power.
“The sword demands respect,” she says, referring to the building’s many prongs, especially a massive one pointed north, smack into downtown’s skyline. The whole building, she said, is “emotional, it’s the center of power down here.”
Like Murray, she was interested in the building’s lunging points, even traveling to the 31st floor of the Republic Plaza building downtown to examine its entanglement with the museum.
“The whole building is affected, on this side,” she said looking out at the museum from inside a 31st-floor office of the skyscraper. From the office the museum looked like some alien ship, its prow aiming for the heart of downtown.
Her recommendation was the same as Murray’s: plants on windowsills or terraces, and mirrors deflecting the museum’s intruding sha.
While all of the feng shui experts interviewed doubted such a building would ever be built in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or many other Asian cities and countries where feng shui is taken seriously, none of them felt the building broadcast an excessive or dangerous amount of sha into Denver’s center. Many of the points direct their sha toward the sky, and the downtown buildings are far enough away to skirt the most potent waves of energy.
As for the building itself, Murray rejoiced at its northeast-facing door – an excellent position for an entry, she says – and at the broad expanse of sky fronting the entrance.
Sky is powerful chi, a positive and desirable energy, the energy that feng shui labors to gather and harness. With its broad opening to the sky, the wing’s entrance has “distant, big chi coming right at you,” says Murray. “This is an A-plus door, in terms of direction and quality of chi.”
It’s the entrance, she says, that ushers in much of the chi that a well-designed structure will then circulate with zip and warmth, making the building inviting and successful. Las Vegas casinos, she says, routinely hire feng shui experts to help in the design of their gambling temples, and the harmony of the entrances is key.
Murray’s only complaint was about the presence of “Denver Monoliths,” an enormous black concrete sculpture by Beverly Pepper between the entrance and the sky. The sculpture, she says, should simply be moved, because it is blocking chi and inhibiting the museum’s potential success.
While examining the entrance, she also noticed a vacant lot just beyond the sculpture, and worried that the busy bulldozers and workers were readying the spot for a new building.
“I’ll tell you what,” she says. “If a building goes up there? Very bad. It will make the museum less important. People will go, but it won’t be a destination.”
In fact, the lot was being shaped into a grassy, chi-friendly public space.
Fighting sha chi
Got a building pointing at your house? You might want to either reflect or absorb the aggressive energy – known as sha chi – that it’s shooting toward you, according to feng shui experts.
MIRRORS: Meet the energy with mirrors, especially eight-sided “bagua mirrors,” typically framed in red, which can be bought at Asian emporiums in the metro area, at New Age stores like For Heaven’s Sake (4383 Tennyson St., No. 1F, Denver, 303-964-9339) and through websites.
PLANTS: Put plants between the offending point and the inside of your house, using indoor plants on windowsills or outdoor plants in front of the window.
ARTILLERY: Miniature cannons, too, are popular in many Asian countries. The idea? The cannons repel the bad energy trying to enter the house.
