Feng Shui & the Keahuolu Courthouse
No, the photo isn’t tilted — it’s aligned to the ground (notice that the name of the building is perfectly level). It’s the roof of this new courthouse building that’s off!
Kona has a new courthouse, and it’s a doozy—brutal and unbalanced! I’ve never before seen a courthouse that didn’t have a feeling of balance—that’s actually important in a courthouse, where you expect the scales of justice to be balanced. The unbalanced part is the crazy roof. Maybe they did it to capture more solar gain, but if so, why is the largest part of the roof facing north not south?
When you see a building that has super tall openings around the doorways, there’s a reason—to make people feel smaller—and authority feel greater. That’s the brutal part.
I haven’t been inside (and I hope I don’t have a reason to) but I heard from a friend that it’s not cold in there—it’s freezing. Cold, brutal, unbalanced—not words that you want to associate with court trials. Sigh.
The one thing they did right was to locate it with the mountain (Hualalai) behind it. So you can add strong to that litany. Gosh, it’s sounding more like “Big Brother” every minute!
