Vaastu expert, numerologist, and tarot reader Shradha Salla, who has worked on several landmark hospitality and real estate projects in India and abroad, believes the time is ripe for a dedicated Vastu certification in the building industry. She says Vastu, a science of directions, aligns perfectly with sustainable design and energy-efficient construction.
“Vastu is the science of directions,” begins Salla, asserting that it is not a mystical belief but a structural science grounded in geometry, energy flow, and spatial alignment. Being a well-known vastu expert and advising diverse projects, both greenfield, brownfield and operational, both in India and abroad, she is of the firm belief that people have started taking vastu more seriously now than before.
Salla, who has offered her services to mix-use developments comprising both residential and hotel components, restaurants, spas, stadiums, etc. in India and overseas, has numerous instances to cite where developers have agreed to incorporate changes to designs which have already finalised by architects, to make their structures vastu compliant.
Citing a recent instance of a residential-cum-hotel project in Goa, she said, much to the chagrin of the architects and designers involved, she suggested a complete change of the entrance of the hotel which was marked for the swimming pool as per the original design. The owners were convinced and agreed to change the direction.
“If there are hotels with residences in it and people want to buy them, then vastu plays a very important role. In Dubai, a lot of hotels have a hotel side and a residential side. So we get all those vastu aligned because everybody believes in it and they want the right room, right facing kitchen and the right energy which goes with it. The right direction for the kitchen, the correct entrance, and the perfect energy balance can transform not just how a place looks, but how it performs,” she explains.
Salla believes it’s time the construction world moved towards a new milestone — Vastu certification, much like other global building certifications. For Salla, creating a third-party Vastu certification framework is not just an idea — it’s a vision taking shape. “I’m seriously thinking about it,” she admits. “You’ve actually reinforced what I’ve been planning. The time is perfect to formalize it — a certification that assures balanced energy and scientifically aligned spaces.”
In her experience, developers are now prioritizing energy flow and directional balance even over marginal design trade-offs. “Earlier, architects would tell me — this is our structure, you adjust accordingly. But now owners say, ‘We don’t care if we lose a little space, it has to be Vastu compliant.’”
For a question on how vastu complements sustainability goals, she said that they are complementary and there is only a very thin line which differentiates both. Vastu is all about decluttering and therefore it very much aligns with the goals of sustainability. Vastu is all about creating airy, minimalistic, light-filled spaces that allow energy to flow freely. It naturally promotes ventilation, light optimization, and balance. All these lead to conservation of resources and less wastage.
In fact, she believes that the science of direction enhances a building’s long-term sustainability by optimizing how it interacts with sunlight, wind, and temperature — key elements in green design. “There’s a beautiful synergy between energy alignment and sustainable architecture,” she adds.
Even in tight urban spaces, like city-center locations, Salla insists that following key directional principles can yield dramatic results. “A small Bandra restaurant that followed every detail is now so successful that people queue outside to dine. The one that ignored directions is struggling with legal issues,” she recounts.
Although rising awareness about vastu and its value while constructing new buildings or designing new business spaces is making people engage vastu experts at the initial design stage itself, the number of people who approach at an advanced stage of construction or after the space becoming fully functional is still quite large.
Admitting this, Salla said that in such cases she helps them to do the corrections as far as possible and reduce the vastu deviations in terms of north-south balancing, colour scheme changes, etc. “I balance the north and the south so that the southwest is heavier and the northwest is lighter,” she informed.
