Vastu
Vastu, integrated properly.
Vastu is a traditional Indian system of architecture, now asked for around the world, that arranges a home by the compass. It is offered to every client, and the client chooses. It is never pushed.
North-east Ishanya
Water
The lightest and most open corner, where the first light comes in.
Placed here Prayer room, entrance
What Vastu is
Vastu Shastra
Said vaas-too shaas-truh
A traditional Indian system of architecture, rooted in the Vedic tradition and written down in Sanskrit texts more than fifteen centuries ago, the Mayamata and the Manasara among them. It arranges a home by the directions: where the light comes in, how the air moves, which rooms sit where, and a centre kept open.
Today it shapes homes far beyond India, from the Dubai Water Canal to a town in Iowa.
Around the world
Born in India, asked for worldwide.
The sun rises in the east in every city, so a home arranged by the directions reads the same in Dubai as in Mumbai or Iowa. That is why Vastu travels: a peer-reviewed study in 2020 surveyed people living in Vastu-designed homes in fourteen countries.
19.08° N · 72.88° E
Mumbai
- Antilia
- The residence of Mukesh Ambani, which Guinness World Records notes was designed on Vaastu Shastra principles.
- Kinara, Juhu
- Shilpa Shetty's sea-facing home, built to Vastu principles, she has said, with Feng Shui alongside.
25.20° N · 55.27° E
Dubai
- Sobha Hartland
- Sobha Group built Vaastu villas and apartments into its community on the Dubai Water Canal.
- The market
- Agents report too few fully Vastu-compliant homes for the Indian and Pakistani buyers asking for them, and master plans setting units aside for Vastu and Feng Shui.
41.07° N · 91.99° W
Fairfield, Iowa
- Maharishi Vedic City
- An American town, incorporated in 2001 and planned on Vastu: its buildings face due east to the rising sun, each around an open centre.
Clients across the US and beyond
Across the United States
- Kathleen Cox
- An American designer who lived in India for years and has written four books on Vastu. Her clients reach across the United States and beyond, the model Christy Turlington among them.
“What yoga does to the body, Vastu does to the home.”
From the public record. None of the people or places named here is a Wood & Weave client or project. Sources: Guinness World Records · Khaleej Times, February 2024 · Sobha Group · Maharishi Vedic City · Akron Beacon Journal · International Journal of Architecture and Urban Development, 2020.
The grid
Read through a grid, its centre kept open.
A Vastu plan is read through a grid laid over the home, the Vastu Purusha Mandala. Each part of it answers to a direction. Its centre, the Brahmasthan, is kept open and light. Water, fire, earth and air take the four corners, and space takes the centre. The rooms follow the element: the kitchen goes with fire, the main bedroom with earth.
Water Jal
North-east · Ishanya
Kept the lightest and most open corner, where the first light comes in.
Entrance, prayer room
Fire Agni
South-east · Agneya
The corner for heat: cooking, and the home's power.
Kitchen, the cook facing east
Earth Prithvi
South-west · Nairutya
The heaviest and most closed corner, with the thickest walls.
Main bedroom, storage
Air Vayu
North-west · Vayavya
The corner for movement, and for coming and going.
Guest room
Space Akasha
The centre · Brahmasthan
Kept open, uncluttered and light: no column, no heavy furniture.
Kept open
The sense in it
You do not need the belief to see the sense.
Read plainly, a great deal of Vastu is about the sun and the air. Morning light where the day begins. The kitchen where the early sun reaches it. The heaviest walls where the afternoon sun is hardest. Air brought through the home, not around it.
In Varun's words, Vastu is an engine for high-performance living, and its significance is only felt once it is done.
It decides where things go, not how they look.
A Vastu-aligned home can be as contemporary, as quiet or as warm as any other. Nobody walking in needs to know.
In Dubai
Where the plan is given, the interior does the work.
In Dubai the plot and the shell are usually given. Vastu then works through what the design decides: which room does what, where the bed and the hob sit, what is kept heavy and what is kept open, and how the entrance is treated.
Read by the compass
True north is taken from the site and the drawings, before anything is designed.
Reviewed by the consultant
One partnered consultant reads the plan and marks what the tradition asks of it.
You choose how far
Fully aligned, the principal rooms only, or not at all. The design follows your choice.
Designed in, not corrected
Decided at the plan stage rather than corrected afterwards, so nothing built is moved.
The consultant
One consultant, chosen slowly.
One partnered consultant, with more than thirty years in the field, who has advised major Indian industrialists.
We are deliberately slow about adding more practitioners. The field is full of people with a short course and confident advice, and a home is not the place to find that out.
- Where
- India
- The home
- A four bedroom apartment
- Value
- AED 500,000
- Vastu
- Every element and orientation aligned
Five things worth knowing before anything else.
You do not need to believe in it.
It is offered to every client, and the client chooses. Much of the reasoning stands on light and air alone.
It does not have to look Indian.
Vastu decides where things go far more than how they look. The style is yours.
It belongs at the plan.
Decided at the plan, it is part of the design. Added afterwards, it means moving what is already built.
It is not a religion.
It grew out of Sanskrit texts, but its design principles are orientation, light, air and where each room sits. People of every faith, and of none, ask for it.
It is never pushed.
If you would rather not, it is not raised again.
Vastu, if you want it, from the first drawing.
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