Rooms · Approach · 12 min read · Updated September 2026

The outside

Garden, balcony, approach. The part of the site the tradition was written for, read at the scale of a plot rather than a valley. The four guardians as hedges, the approach as a sequence, the water in front and the mouth it leaves by, what the Ming garden manual says about suiting the site, the research on green ground, and what a balcony can do about all of it when there is no plot at all.

Oriented E 072°

Wood

Fig. 01 Trees from a low angle. The tradition’s planting is placement, taller on one side and lower on the other, and nothing straight at the door.

The classical texts are about ground, not rooms. They read hills, water and wind around a site, and everything the tradition later said about houses is that reading brought indoors and shrunk. The outside of a house, the garden, the approach, the balcony of a flat, is where the tradition is most itself, and where its advice is closest to what a landscape designer would say without it. It is also where the Chinese garden was made, which is the tradition’s landscape built by hand at the scale of a plot.

The four animals, at the scale of a plot

Plan 01 The site: something solid behind, planting at the flanks, open ground in front, and a path that curves to the door The house faces the road at the bottom of the plan. Behind it, a hedge or wall stands in for the tortoise; on the dragon side, which is the house’s left as it looks out, the planting is taller; on the tiger side it is lower. The open, level, lit ground before the door is the ming tang. The path from the gate curves; the ghosted straight path from the road to the door is the arrangement the tradition reads as a road aimed at the house.

The shape is the same one the tradition asks of a bed and a chair: something solid behind, the approach in view, and shelter at the sides. On a plot it is achievable by ordinary gardening. A fence or hedge along the back boundary, a tree or two on the flanks, and a front garden that is not filled with things are most of it.

Tradition · The garden as the landscape made small

The Chinese garden is the tradition’s valley built by hand. A scholar’s garden of the Ming put a rockery behind the hall, which is the mountain; a pond before it, which is the water; covered walkways along the sides, which are the flanking ridges; and a winding entrance through a screen wall, which is the turned approach. Ji Cheng’s Yuan Ye of 1631, the manual of garden making, opens with the rule the whole art rests on, to suit the work to the site, yin di zhi yi: read what the ground already does, its slope, its water, its views, and build with it rather than across it. That is the Zangshu’s method turned from choosing a site into making one, and a small garden that keeps a wall behind the house, a tree at each side and an open front has followed both books without knowing it.

The approach

The path from the gate or the street to the door is what the tradition reads first, because it is what qi, and visitors, and the person coming home, follow. It asks for the path to curve, to arrive at the door at an angle rather than head-on, and to open out before the door into the ming tang, the bright hall, a space to pause in before the house begins. It dislikes a path that runs straight from the road at the door, and it dislikes the road itself doing the same thing, which the guide to choosing a home draws at the scale of a street.

Planting and water

The tradition’s planting rules are few. Nothing directly in front of the door: a single tree on the door’s axis is one of the manuals’ named faults, read as blocking the mouth of qi and, more plainly, as a trunk in the way of the view and the light. Taller planting on the dragon side, lower on the tiger side. Nothing dead, dying or thorned by the entrance. Evergreens behind for the wall the tortoise wants, and something that moves, grass or a light-leaved tree, in front, for the bird.

Water belongs in front. The tradition wants it visible from the door, still or moving gently toward the house rather than away, and dislikes it behind the house, where it reads as the ground giving way. A pond, a basin or a birdbath in the front garden is the classical placement; a pool behind the house is the arrangement the manuals argue about and the site the reader will find easiest to ignore. The rule is in front, and still; the water features guide draws it.

Evidence · Green ground

Ulrich’s patients with a view of trees recovered faster than those with a view of a wall, and the Kaplans’ work on the preference for natural scenes found that people rest their attention in greenery in a way they cannot in built surfaces. Kuo and Sullivan compared ninety-eight apartment buildings in one Chicago housing project, all the same buildings with the same tenants by lot, and found fewer crimes reported from the buildings with trees and grass around them than from those with bare ground, property and violent crimes alike, and residents who used the green ground more and knew their neighbours better. None of the three concerns feng shui. All three concern what the tradition asks of the front of a house, which is that it look out on something living and that the ground before it be used.

Plan 02 A garden as a site: trees behind, hedges at the flanks, a path that curves to the door, water in front and off the door’s line The house sits in the upper half with its back to the trees, which are its tortoise, and hedges at the sides, its dragon and tiger. The path bends from the gate to the door; the ghosted straight path is the one the tradition reads as an arrow, and the ghosted tree stands where a tree should not, in the door’s line. The pond is in front of the house and to one side of the door, the bird’s open water. The seat has the house behind it and the garden in front. The bins are at the side, behind the hedge.

Drawn as a plan, the garden is the site at the scale of a plot. Trees behind the house make the tortoise; the hedges at the flanks make the dragon and the tiger; the path from the gate bends, because a straight path aimed at the door is read as an arrow; the pond sits in front of the house and to one side of the door’s line; the seat has the house at its back and the garden in front, which is the command position out of doors; and the bins are at the side, behind the hedge, where the tradition puts what it does not want seen from the door. The far corner where the ground falls is planted, which is the water mouth closed.

The balcony

A flat has no plot, and its outside is the balcony. The tradition treats it as the flat’s ming tang: the open space before the house, to be kept open. A balcony used as a store, with the bicycle and the boxes and the broken chair, is the front garden filled with things; a balcony with two chairs, a plant at each side and a clear floor is the same space doing what the tradition asks. Planting goes along the rail rather than out on the floor, with one stretch left clear opposite the seat so that one view is framed and the rest is hidden, which is the garden’s borrowed view at the scale of pots and what the garden essay draws; a balcony that faces something the tradition dislikes, the corner of the next block, a road running at it, is screened with a plant or a slatted panel on that side only. The balcony guide takes the room on its own, with the depth below which it is a shelf, the rail against the seated eye, and the question of glazing it in.

Fig. 03 The balcony as the flat’s bright hall, twice. The room is above, the rail below, and the door opens out onto a floor of three metres twenty by one metre thirty. A: the balcony as most balconies are, a store: the bicycle across the door, the boxes and the broken chair along the rail, the plants where they were put down, and no floor to stand on; it is the front garden filled with things, and the tradition reads it as the open ground before the house given up. B: the same balcony kept as open ground: two chairs, a small table, a plant at each end, the rail clear so that the view stays open, the door’s swing free, and the floor a floor. The bins and the bicycle have gone inside or down. Nothing has been bought, and the flat has recovered its outside. A balcony is the only open ground most flats have, and the tradition’s whole rule for it is that it stay open ground. The plants go at the sides, where the tradition puts the dragon and the tiger, and not along the rail, where they close the view; the seat has the flat at its back and the air in front, the command position out of doors. Scale 40 units to the metre.

What is outside your control

Most of what the tradition reads outside a house cannot be changed by its occupant: the road, the slope, the neighbours’ roofline, the pylon on the hill. The classical remedies are screening, planting and, in some schools, deflecting devices at the boundary. The beams and corners guide sets out where the perceptible case ends: a corner across the street is not felt by anyone who has not been told to feel it, and where a feature dominates the view, a hedge is justified on grounds of view and privacy without any further argument. The mirrors guide draws what the bagua mirror on a door actually does to a line, for those who want one.

Checklist

Something solid behind the house: a hedge, a fence, a wall, rising ground
Planting at the sides, a little taller on the left as the house looks out, where the wind comes from
Open, level, lit ground before the door
A path that curves to the door and arrives at an angle
No tree, post or pillar on the door’s axis
Water in front and still, not behind; the corner where the ground falls away planted
The balcony kept as open ground, the floor clear and the planting on the rail
Screen what dominates the view, for the view’s sake