Guides · Flats · 14 min read · Updated September 2026

Choosing a flat

The tradition was written for houses on the ground and most of its readers now live in the air. What the classical reading makes of a tower, in the order a buyer meets it. The building’s site and shape, and whose facing a flat has; which floor, with the street, the trees and the wind banded in section; the floor plate read from the corridor, the lifts, the door opposite and the refuse room; the unit’s own shape and door; and what the research on high-rise living says about height, children and the view.

Oriented SW 207°

Earth

Fig. 01 Balconies in the afternoon. A tower is a street stood on end, and the tradition reads it floor by floor.

The tradition was written for a house on a plot with hills behind it, and most of the people who consult it now live on the eleventh floor of a slab with a lift. The classical reading does not stop at the ground floor; it climbs, and the practitioners of Hong Kong, who have read more flats than anyone, have made a method of it. This guide gives that method in the order a buyer meets a flat, the building, the floor, the floor plate and the unit, and sets beside each step what the research on high-rise living has measured. The choosing a home guide reads the site; this one reads what is stacked on it.

The building first

A tower is read as a house before its flats are read as rooms. The five steps of the classical site reading, the range behind, the flanking hills, the water, the spot and the facing, apply to the block as a whole: what stands behind it, what flanks it, what road or river passes in front, and where its main door is. A block with a taller building behind and lower ones to either side has its four animals; a block on a corner with a road on two sides has two exposed flanks, and a block at the end of a straight road takes the road’s line, the lu chong the sha catalogue draws, on every floor at once. The building’s shape is read as a plot’s: a regular block is whole, and a tower with a wing cut away has a missing corner in every flat on that side, which the bagua essay explains. The slit between two tall neighbours that faces the block is the sky-cut sha, the one fault the modern city invented, and it is felt most on the floors level with the gap.

School · Whose facing is it

The Compass schools disagree about what a flat faces, and a buyer who consults two practitioners may get two charts. One school takes the building’s facing, the side of its main entrance, and reads every flat in it by that bearing and the block’s year of completion, on the principle that the flat is a room of a larger house. Another takes the flat’s own front door, since that is where its qi enters. A third, common in Hong Kong, takes the flat’s most open side, the balcony or the wall of windows, on the principle that a flat on the fourteenth floor has no door to the sky and its window is its mouth. Skinner and Wong’s manuals give the arguments; the site’s facing direction guide gives the three cases and recommends the reader take the building’s facing for the block’s chart and the flat’s own door for the eight-mansion reading, which is what most practitioners in fact do. Whichever is taken, it should be taken with a compass and not from the estate agent’s plan.

Which floor

Fig. 01 A tower of twenty floors in section, with the street in front of it, a row of trees and a lower neighbour, and the floors banded as the tradition and the research read them. The ground floor is shops, lobby and refuse, and the road’s line and noise. The low floors, one to three, are at the level of the street and the tree canopy: the noisiest, the most overlooked, and the ones the manuals read as taking the road’s sha. The middle band, from about the fourth floor to the twelfth, is above the trees and below the wind, with a view of the neighbours’ roofs rather than the sky; it is the band the tradition prefers, because qi is read as gathering where it is sheltered and scattering where the wind takes it. The high floors have the wind, the sun and the view, and the longest wait for the lift; the top floor has the tank, the motor room, the heat and the leaks. The bands are not rules. They are the trade-offs of height, which every buyer weighs and the tradition named first. The floor heights are drawn at three metres; the tree canopy at three storeys, which is a mature street tree. Gifford’s review of the research on high-rise living finds most people, and families with children in particular, less satisfied the higher they live, with the view the one thing that improves; the tradition’s middle band is where the two curves cross.

The tradition’s answer to the question of height is neither high nor low, and it is older than towers: qi gathers where it is sheltered and scatters where the wind takes it, so a site too exposed loses what it collects, and a site in a hollow with no outlook has nothing to collect. Stood on end, that is the section drawn above. The ground floor is the shops, the lobby and the refuse, and the road’s line and noise; the low floors are at the level of the street and the tree canopy, the noisiest and most overlooked, and the ones that take a road’s sha directly, because the line of a road is a line at the height of a road. The middle band, from about the fourth floor to the twelfth, is above the trees and below the wind, with a view of the neighbours’ roofs, and it is the band the Hong Kong practitioners recommend to families, for reasons that turn out to be the research’s. The high floors have the wind, which the tradition dislikes for the reason it gives its name, the sun and the view, and a long wait for the lift; the top floor has the tank and the motor room over its ceiling, the heat of the roof and, in most blocks, the first leak. The floor’s number is a separate question, and the numbers essay answers it: the fours and the thirteenths that a tower leaves out are a market’s fear and not a building’s fault.

Evidence · High-rise living

Gifford reviewed the research on living in tall buildings and found it, on balance, less satisfactory than living low for most people, and for families with children most of all: children on high floors play outside less and are watched less, neighbours know each other less, fear of crime is higher, and the effects grow with the floor. The gains of height are the view, the light and the quiet, which the affluent and the childless value and which raise the price of the upper floors everywhere. Evans’s review of housing and mental health finds high-rise living associated with worse mental health for mothers of young children on low incomes, and with nothing in particular for others. The World Health Organization’s night noise guideline, which the quiet guide draws, is exceeded at the windows of the low floors on any main road and approached, not met, a dozen floors up on the same road. The tradition’s middle band is where the curves cross: above the noise, below the isolation.

The floor plate

Plan 02 A floor of a slab block, read from the corridor A typical floor of a slab block with seven flats, the lifts at the left end of a corridor and the stair and the refuse room at the right. The tradition reads the corridor as a river and the lift doors as its mouth: the line runs from the lifts down the corridor to the door of the flat at its end, D, which takes both the corridor’s line and the lifts’ opening, and is the flat the practitioners ask about first. B and F have their doors opposite each other, the door-to-door fault of the manuals, which in a corridor means two households’ comings and goings in each other’s hall. G has its door beside the refuse room and the stair, the one thing on a floor that is always heard and sometimes smelt. A, E and D are corner flats with windows on two sides, which the tradition wants for the air and the light; B, C, F and G have one aspect. The reading is the same one the Hong Kong practitioners give a floor plate, and it is also the estate agent’s pricing, in a different order.

The practitioners read a floor of a block as they read a street, from its plan, before they read the flat. The corridor is the river and the lift doors are its mouth: the line runs from the lifts down the corridor to whatever door stands at its end, and the flat at the end of a straight corridor takes both the corridor’s line and the lift’s, which opens and closes on it all day. Two front doors opposite each other across the corridor are the door-to-door fault, dui men sha, which the manuals read as a quarrel between the households and a designer reads as two halls with no privacy from each other. The door beside the refuse room, the stair or the lift motor takes the one thing on a floor that is always heard. Emmons’s survey of Hong Kong residents found a move into a new flat to be the commonest occasion for calling a practitioner, and the questions asked at the door of a tower are these, the lift, the corridor and the door opposite, before anything inside. The corner flats have windows on two sides, the air and the light the tradition wants and the windows guide gives the physics of; the middle flats have one aspect, and a flat that faces only into a light well has none. Alexander’s pattern language reaches the same reading from the other direction: light on two sides of every room, and an entrance that is not on a thoroughfare.

The unit itself

Inside the door the flat is read as a house, and the site’s guides take over: the entrance, the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom. Four things belong to flats in particular. The first is the door that opens straight onto a wall of windows, so that the hall and the balcony are one line through the flat, the chuan tang or through-hall fault, which the tradition reads as qi entering and leaving in one breath and a designer as a flat with no place to arrive in; a screen, a bookcase or a turn answers it. The second is the door that opens onto the kitchen, common in small flats, which puts the stove in the first sight and the kitchen page’s rule about fire at the door applies. The third is the bathroom at the centre of the plan, with no window, which the bathroom page treats as the flat’s one real problem. The fourth is what lies above and below: a bedroom over a shop’s kitchen, a garage or the refuse store, or under a neighbour’s bathroom, is read by the practitioners as sleeping on fire, fumes or water, and by the acoustician as sleeping under a soil pipe; the quiet guide gives the numbers. The shape of the unit is the shape of a plot: regular is whole, an L has a missing corner, and a flat that narrows towards the back is the tradition’s purse turned inside out.

Fig. 03 The four faults that belong to flats in particular, each drawn in the flat it happens in. The through-hall, chuan tang, is the front door in one line with the balcony glass, so that the hall and the balcony are a single sightline through the flat: the tradition reads qi entering and leaving in one breath, a designer a flat with no place to arrive in, and a screen, a bookcase or a turn answers both. The door onto the kitchen puts the stove in the first sight from the threshold, and the kitchen page’s rule about fire at the door applies; a half wall or the stove moved off the door’s line is the fix. The bathroom at the centre of the plan with no window is the fault the site treats as the flat’s one real problem, since nothing moves it, and the answer is a fan that runs and a door kept shut. The fourth is below the floor and off the plan: a bedroom over a shop’s kitchen, a garage or the refuse store, read by the practitioners as sleeping on fire or fumes and by the acoustician as sleeping over an extract fan that runs until two in the morning. Bruun 2008 for the practitioners’ readings; Evans 2003 and the WHO night-noise guidelines for what lies below; the site’s guides for the fixes. North is up in the plans; the fourth panel is a section.

The drawing gives the four in the flats they happen in, with the fix under each. Three of them are on the plan and can be seen at the viewing: stand in the front door and look, and if the balcony glass is straight ahead the flat is a through-hall, if the stove is straight ahead the door opens onto the kitchen, and if the bathroom has no window it is at the centre. The fourth is not on the plan, and the viewing has to go downstairs and round the back to find it: the shop’s extract fan, the garage door, the refuse store, whatever is under the bedroom floor. A practitioner reads the first three as faults of qi and the fourth as sleeping on fire, and a designer reads the first three as faults of arrival and the fourth as a noise source, and both would sooner have the fourth found before the deposit than after.

Viewing a flat, in order

The block from the street. What stands behind, what flanks, what road faces it; the slit between the neighbours; the shape, and whether a wing is missing.
The floor. Middle floors for a family, above the trees and below the wind; the low floors only on a quiet street; the top only for the view, with the tank checked.
The floor plate. Not at the end of the corridor, not opposite another door, not beside the refuse room, the stair or the motor; two aspects if it can be had.
The door. Not in the lift’s line; opening onto a hall and not onto the windows or the stove.
The unit. A regular shape, a bathroom with a window if possible, and nothing over a garage, a kitchen or a soil pipe where the bed will go.
The compass. Take the building’s facing and the flat’s door with a compass, on the day, and the facing direction guide does the rest.