Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Our earth is a living body that has energy veins flowing all over, just like the human body. These natural earth energies are as old as the existence of the earth and affect all living things on its surface. Natural energies where believed to have either a healing effect in “Power Spots” or a harmful effect in “Geopathic Stress Zones”. These zones have the ability to change the normal functioning of humans and can be damaging to the human health. Thousands of years ago, the effects of these natural energies where taken into consideration in the design and location of built environment including menhirs, churches, and mosques. This no longer represents a step in designing the modern urban environment, although recent research proved that electromagnetic radiation from natural sources badly affect the urban ambiance. Therefore the detection of these energies should represent an important step in designing any indoor or outdoor built environment. This paper represents an exploratory study that attempts to further understand the surrounding natural energy fields and their effect on the human behavior and well being through the analysis of previous indoor case studies and the assessment of an outdoor case study in AlSultan Hassan mosque that, based on Dr. Ibrahim Karim’s book “Back to a future for mankind”, is a good example where the layout of the building changes direction according to the earth energy grid. This assessment takes place using observations, questionnaires, and structured interviews with people in the inner court of the mosque.