1.1. Research Purposes and Motivation
This study aims to create an artificial intelligence system of house-choosing based on the Li Chi School’s viewpoint of Feng Shui. The system takes into consideration the Feng Shui concepts of house’s fate and people’s fate and the realistic housing conditions. It is able to judge whether a certain house is suitable for a given family by simply inputting some basic and personal information. And people who want to purchase a house can use this system to find the house best suitable for them in advance. With the system, people can take the advantage of our ancestors’ wisdom to choose houses, without spending much money hiring a Feng Shui specialist.
While most Feng Shui researches have been qualitative oriented, this study aims to qualify the related guidelines and taboos of Feng Shui such as furniture layout and which directions they should face, etc.. This study tries to integrate the information of the fate of a given family and their relationship with the house, and, therefore, to offer some basic Feng Shui principles for people who want to buy a new house or renovate the original one, and to improve their health and increase their fortune in the long run.
Although there have been many academic researches on Feng Shui, most of which focus mainly on the theories and are qualitative-oriented. Few of them take a quantitative approach, and even fewer incorporate artificial intelligence into their researches. The researches in the past have shown that many studies on Feng Shui discuss about the relationship between health and Feng Shui. The research such as “On the View of Body Applied to Interior Layout of Housing Based on Feng Shui” (Zhang, 2010) and “The Relationship between the Tien-Yi Location and the Human Body” (Lin, 2002) would be cases in point. Other study that takes
Reasoning and Genetic Algorithm (Juan, 2006).
1.2. The Relationship between Feng Shui and Chinese
In Chinese culture, Feng Shui plays a very important role in choosing house. It is a scientific wisdom combined with construction, the environment, philosophy, geomancy, and the theory developed by Chinese ancestors (Mak and Ng, 2005). Feng Shui theories are also applied to choosing good days, divination and house selection. It also helps determine the values and beliefs that dictate expectations as well as responses to house (Tam et al., 1999).
Furthermore, the most Taiwanese are convinced that if Ch’i of house is great, it will be able to bring health and wealth for us (Lu, 2000).
Chu (1997) had conducted surveys on the popularity of Feng Shui and social changes in Taiwan in 1985, 1990, 1995. The surveys showed that Feng Shui is gaining its popularity, and fifty percent of people surveyed believed that good Feng Shui will help to improve health conditions, create wealth and has a good effect on the development of their descendants.
And nearly seventy percent of the subjects believe that the residential pattern and orientation will affect the safety of the house (Wang, 2005). Therefore, Chinese Feng Shui does have a deep influence on people. And recently, a lot of reports and accessible information about Feng Shui did have contributed to the growth of Feng Shui’s
“cultural genes.”
1.3. The Modern Western Study of The Evolution of Feng Shui
Tam (1999) mentioned three significant independent variables (‘‘Feng Shui,’’
‘‘Accessibility,’’ and ‘‘Building Age’’) and his ideas about Feng Shui was meant to the environment around the house. As a matter of fact, Feng Shui also includes interior geomantic
taboos of houses and personal fates.
Yang (1993) pointed that Eitel (1873) first proposed the use of science to examine Feng Shui. He thinks that Feng Shui and nature are interrelated and it is a quasi-science that includs the ideas of gas, shape and numbers. In the book “Design with Nature” by I.
Mcharg, geomancy is defined as a kind of ecological architectonics, and is closely related to nature. Todd (1994) also mentioned his definition of Feng Shui in his book “Principles of Ecological Design” that Feng Shui originates from the observation of the world, and everything comes from Mother Nature on earth is bound to return to nature.
1.4. The Relationship between Feng Shui, House Buying and Living Standards in Taiwan Geomantic taboos certainly provide the rules for building Chinese traditional buildings (Han, 1987) and layouts of furniture in the room. For example, the residential pattern should be quadrate, the beams of light creep in from the ceiling of the room should be avoided, the dining room should not locate opposite to the bathroom, and the bed placed opposite to the door of the bathroom is forbidden. Since environmental variables of Feng Shui have relatively small effect on people, we choose interior Feng Shui as our variables to determine if the Feng Shui of the personal room is good or bad.
Recently, Taiwan’s property market has enjoyed a boom in both old and new houses sales (Institute for physical planning and information, 2008). The house prices in Taiwan mainly driven by the local market economy have given the house an unaffordable price tag to most Taiwanese. Whereas about 87.36% of total households own houses (Housing State Survey, 2010), the most public hardly afford another house in their life.
However, since most Taiwanese families own their house, people in Taiwan concerned
dimension of life (Guo, 2003). In Taiwan, most people are pursuing higher quality of life and earning money because of it.
Above all, how to create a simple system that can help people choose houses according to Feng Shui is an importance issue to dwell on more in the future (Juan Y.K, 2006).
Although most of Chinese believe in Feng Shui, they don’t know how to apply it to choosing probably the only house in their life. Furthermore, they always spend much money and time finding the geomantic specialist to remodel their houses. In other words, Feng Shui has become an important feature of housing market (Tam et al., 1999). Dr. Tsai also thinks that Feng Shui has its values for studying. The effect of geomantic sciences have been verified by architectural physics and architectonics lately. So, Feng Shui is closely related to our life and Chinese building.
In Section 2, the study will give an overview of geomantic buildings and further introduce some related studies about layout of house with the assistance of AI techniques. In Section 3, this research will discuss how to choose house with Feng Shui and recode some variables of house taboos or directions etc., and use some useful variables from house data and related studies. In Section 4, predictions and classification about people, house and luck will be made. The final section will summarize the study.
1.5. The Structure and Process of the Research
Fig 1 The Structure and Process of the Research