Contemporary Architectural Design and Property Development Essay

Contemporary Architectural Design and Property Development - Essay Example In general, a religion means a strict, unwritten code of essential rules (including morals and traditions) established by humans in order to control social life of their society. Vastu and Feng-Shui is a part of old traditions and culture of Chinese and Indian societies. In a time, they became popular in all Asian countries. Both of the concepts refer to the science of planning buildings, travelways, and graves such that they will get maximum benefits and minimum damage from the 'the cosmos'. More specifically, Feng-Shui addresses wind, water, and other natural forces. "Natural forces" in this case include good and bad luck, which are explicitly compared to wind. The idea of both approaches is that inhabitants of a well-sited home, or descendants of someone buried in a good gravesite, can expect wealth, sons, status, and security to flow to them. Rajgopal (2002) explains: The rebirth of Vastu Shastra parallels contemporary spiritual movements arising all over the world that seek to connect with a higher energy, draw closer to the mysteries of the universe, and contribute to a major paradigm shift (p. 33). However, focally, Vastu and Feng-Shui in... s a true folk science, as recognized by the first Western observer to comment extensively on it and by many Chinese and Westerners since Vastu and Feng-Shui also involve an emotional response to landscapes (Freeman, 2005). In India, excellent work is being done which shows not only that modem architecture can be given a worthy landscape setting, but also that it may soon be possible to find landscape architects who can deal imaginatively with the vast new opportunities created for them by modern town and country planning. But no large body of recognizably modern landscape architecture exists, and in only a few countries is there a strong school of designers (Pegrum, 2000). In modern Asian (and Indian) architecture the two great motive forces of the modern movement are on the one hand the new opportunities being created by technical and social progress and on the other the new structural techniques. In landscape architecture new opportunities are certainly being created, but the technique of garden construction is still fundamentally the same as it was in the eighteenth century. "The three main principles of Veda are right orientation, right placement, and right proportion" (Rajgopal, 2002, p. 34). Even the invention of modern earth-moving machinery, which may seem revolutionary, has in fact merely accelerated and cheapened processes which were used by old builders. Rajgopal (2002) explains that: The reason for da Gama's consternation was that all buildings constructed in Kerala, regardless of the faith of their inhabitants, were built according to the principles of Vastu Shastra by takshagans-- skilled craftsmen-carpenters well versed in the ancient science (p. 34). Today, in Vastu and Feng-Shui, in spite of the advance of science and the discovery of new plants,