Vastu Architecture

In 1998 and 1999, I traveled to Madras, India, to study the principles of Vastu Science as applied to Vedic Architecture.  With good luck, I found an architect in India who was an expert of the tradition of knowledge: Dr. V. Ganapati Sthapati of Madras, India.

Ganapati Sthapati
Ganapati Sthapati was born in 1927 into a family whose ancestors built the great temple at Tanjore in the 10th century. He learned his craft from his father and uncle. Starting out as a sculptor’s apprentice, growing to become a master sculptor and a temple designer. He spent 27 years as head of the Government College of Architecture and Sculpture in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu. He is responsible for India’s significant resurgence in the ancient art of stone carving. After his retirement in 1988, he continued building temples and founded the Vastu Vedic Research Foundation to explore the ancient origins of temple craftsmen.  He recently received the Pabma Bushan Award, India’s highest for civilians.

When I first met Sthapati, I showed him my house designs and he chuckled as he critiqued them. He said that architecture was frozen music and that a building could be an expression of pleasant and powerful harmonies. He made sketches on my drawings, mentioning something called a “Vastu Purusha Mandala”. He spoke of the possibility of a building being a coherence generator, tuning the occupants to the laws of the universe and increasing health, wealth and spiritual well being.

He said that a building was a living organism, like the human nervous system, and could be designed in “harmonic resonance” with the basic underlying energy structure of the universe. But more than his words, his presence, his confidence, his enthusiasm and love of his art, told me that he was a man who lived his Truth.

Vastu Purusha Mandala
Over the years I have applied the fundamental principles of this science including the underlying sacred geometry of the Vastu building, technically called Vastu Purusha Mandala, to hundreds of projects all over the world. In Sthapati’s words: “What is amazing to be remembered in this context is that they (forms produced by the application of Vaastu Science) are the forms (geometrical patterns) of the Spirit, reproduced in its own time-scale. They are the replicas of the subtle forms experienced at heart. They are living organisms that resonate with the Supreme Reality.”

The design regime for the Vastu architect follows specific parameters:

1. Orientation and siting considerations.

2. Building Layout with regard to a grid called “Vastu Purusha Mandala”.

3. Dimensioning with regard to the client_s birth time.

4. Exterior door locations

5. Brahmastan

6. Room Placement

7. Height

All these principles (and more) taken together give the architect a design matrix for creating buildings that live and vibrate harmoniously with universal energies. I have found them easy and pleasing to use. I am convinced that this information is worth study and application by anyone interested in understanding the significance and full potential of sheltering the human nervous system.