Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 3/17/2023 10:41:09 AM
When Linda Ruth and Greg Spitzfaden built their Peterborough home in the late 1990s, they also built in some good fortune.
As avid practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Ruth and Spitzfaden wanted to build a home that reflected their values and the calming lifestyle TM encourages.
“It's no secret that where we live can affect our attitude at the very least, sometimes our health,” Spitzfaden said. “Frank Lloyd Wright said the structure you live in has a great effect on your life.”
So the couple teamed with the Maharishi Vastu Architecture design firm to build a “fortune-creating” home in the Vedic tradition. Vedic architecture follows a set of principles intended to encourage “nourishing influences” on its inhabitants by adhering to a specific set of design guidelines.
“The most basic one is the entrance has to face either east or north, and it has to be dead onto the grid,” Spitzfaden said.
Sunrise is an important factor, as well, so when the foundation went down on their parcel of land off Old Jaffrey Road, the entrance faced due east with a view of the rising sun over the Wapack Range.
Windows and doors are placed in such a way that one can open them and look clear through from one side of the house to another, creating a harmonious channel. At the center of the home lies the “Brahmasthan,” a zone free from obstruction that allows light to cascade from the second story onto a small model of a Vedic structure on display in the home’s “center of silence.”
There is a large Transcendental Meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa, where Maharishi Vastu Architecture is located, including whole neighborhoods with homes designed in the Vedic style, with the traditional “kalash” (a cupola-like structure) crowning the roof. But in Peterborough, Spitzfaden and Ruth weren’t sure if their new build would fit in with the old New England farmhouses and colonials.
“I thought, ‘This is going to look so weird,’” Ruth said. “People are going to think we are really weird with the kalash on top of the house.”
As it turned out, Spitzfaden said their neighbors commented that the house looked like it had “been there for 200 years.”
“Part of me wanted to fit in to the whole New England motif,” Spitzfaden said.
As for the fortune-creating aspects of the home, Spitzfaden said it has “borne out its promise,” as the house inspires a comfortable feeling, as if it’s taking care of them.
“If there’s a downside to this, it’s that the longer I live here, I want to go away even less,” Spitzfaden said.