ARCHITECTURE & ESOTERICISM

Architecture is the origin of the spaces we live in, our life activities and the place our memories and events are stored. Since I was a child, I always felt attracted by mysteries and stories related to haunted buildings, cursed places and constructions with special energy fields that were linked with the unknown. As an architect, this curiosity grew and become part of my parallel source of investigation.

I was 5 years old when the movie Ghostbusters was released in 1984. One of the facts that made me been chained to watching the movie from time to time was the story of the 55 Central Park West Building. Although the building has not been given an official name, it is often colloquially known as The Ghostbusters Building orThe Shandor Building, the fictional names given in the movie.

55 Central Park West Building - Source Flickr

Built in Art Deco Style, the plans for the building were developed by the architectural firm Schwartz & Gross at the behest of Victor Earle and John C. It was opened as a rental property in 1930.

In the movie, the building was the residence of the Ghostbusters' first client, cellist Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). Later in the movie they managed to know the building had been designed and constructed by the insane architect and surgeon Ivo Shandor, who had founded a secret society in 1920 focused on the Cult of Gozer, with over a thousand followers. Gozer was an entity first worshipped by the Hittites, the Mesopotamians and the Sumerians and its cult was initially centered in the building, as home of the Gozerian Cult members. They performed bizarre rituals on the roof seeking to summon Gozer the Destructor and end of the world. The Gozerian Temple on the roof consisted in some ornaments, altars, Egyptian inspired obelisks and two Terror Dog (Zuul) gargoyle statues. 

Although this story is known as pure fiction, it has similarities with other building turbulent stores linked with esotericism.

THE DAKOTA BUILDING

The Dakota, also known as the Dakota Apartments, is located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The Dakota was constructed between, 1880 and 1884 by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh's architectural firm, under the commission of Edward Cabot Clark, head of the Singer Manufacturing Company. The building purportedly was named The Dakota because at the time of its construction, the area was sparsely inhabited and considered remote from the inhabited area of Manhattan.

The Dakota Building - Source Triplemint

The Dakota is a square building built around a central courtyard. The arched main entrance is a large carriage door. The general layout of the apartments is in the French style of the period, with all major rooms connected and lined to each other and also accessible from a hall or corridor. The arrangement allows a natural circulation for guests from one room to another and gave ventilation from two sides, which was relatively new in Manhattan at the time.

Originally, The Dakota had 65 apartments with four to 20 rooms, without any apartment being alike. These apartments have access to staircases and elevators located in the corners of the building courtyard. All apartments were pre-rented before the building was opened, although it supposed a money pit for Mr. Clark, who died before it was completed, and his heirs.

The building design has the peculiarity of not having fire escapes, since the head architect Henry J. Hardenbergh avoided them in order to keep the building design, using fireproofing methods and materials instead. Although the building has avoided any major fire incidents, it would be practically impossible to get out from any of its 103 apartments.

Dakota Apartments Plan - Source Untapped Cities

After it opening 150 years ago, the building became especially famous after being the residence of John Lennon, who was shot dead at the main gate of the building. Since then, stories of ghost sightings have loomed around the building for years as well as many rumors of curses and haunting in this Gothic-style construction. If there is a Dakota building curse, it may have become most prominent with Lennon's death. However, what makes the Dakota building history more fascinating than most is the close ties that it has to many notable people.

Aside from Lennon, countless well-known individuals such as Lauren Bacall, Boris Karloff, and Joe Namath have lived there. The Dakota was also a prominent filming location for one of some other cursed stories.

It was Lennon itself the first one that witnessed this paranormal activity The Beatles musician said to his wife he had seen a crying-lady-ghost roaming the halls of the building. Yoko Ono, after the death of her husband, decided to stay at the building and claims to have seen her John at his white piano.

The Dakota’s list of dead guests and creepy exterior fa?ade promptly attracted the attention of the team behind the horror film Rosemary’s Baby. The movie is about a young actor and his wife, moving into an old New York City apartment building called The Bramford. As the couple decides to conceive a baby there, strange things begin to happen, leading Rosemary to suspect that her doctor and neighbors have something sinister planned for her unborn child. The Dakota was used for many exterior shots of The Bramford as plenty of the Dakota’s design elements and ornamentations that matched perfectly with the movie.

The paranormal activity linked with this building started with the owner, Edward S. Clark, who was fond of the idea of interacting with the dead. He used to hold spiritism sessions at the building. It is commonly believed by paranormal investigators that these activities may have left some open portals to the afterlife.

There are some reports of paranormal activity at the Dakota Apartments in the 1960s, when a construction worker who was working near the apartments stated he saw a figure with the body of a man but the face of a young boy, coinciding with the death of the famous resident Judy Holliday.

Another reoccurring event consisted in moving objects moving in the apartments. Residents also often report hearing tiny footsteps and odd noises at strange times in their apartments. A resident named Frederick Weinstein and his wife Suzanna reported seeing the lights of a chandelier in his living room form below on the street, though they do not have any chandeliers. After a further inspection, they noticed a patched up set of bolts in the ceiling where a chandelier had once hung.

The most sinister stories in the Dakota Building or New York come from the basement, where objects seemed to move mysteriously on their own. Other people have seen a man who looks like Edward Cabot Clark, the developer of the building, once again in the basement. However, Clark never lived in “his” building.

LE CORBUSIER AND OCCULTISM

Stepping aside from haunted buildings and ghost stories, there are many more links between architecture and the esoteric world. One of the most reputed architect and the father of modern style for many, Le Corbusier, is known to have flirted with some secret societies. Most of these theories are summarized in the book “Le Corbusier and the occult”, by J.K. Birksted.

It was very common at that time that artists were seeking orientation and inspiration in some gurus such as Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Blavatsky or Steiner. At the same time, they started exploring the world of alchemy, psychology, technology and ancient myths, Le Corbusier seemed to have played some role in Freemasonry at the same time he played a key role in architecture. 

Le Corbusier - Source Architect's Journal

When Charles-édouard Jeanneret reinvented himself as Le Corbusier in Paris, he started using the pseudonym that will be stuck to his legend and legacy. He grew up in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, where the Masonic Loge of L'Amitié was located. This loge was the centre of studies and development of some alternative moral, social, and philosophical ideas, including some symbolic iconography of the right angle (rectitude) and the compass (exactitude). These ideas would accompany Le Corbusier in his career, describing them as “time-honored ideas, ingrained and deep-rooted in the intellect, like entries from a catechism.”

Some later research has established links between the artist and alchemy, astrology, Orphism, and Gnosticism throughout his work, and all point toward the spiritual rebirth he imagined his buildings would bring about.

Fashion Catwalk - Promenade Architecturale (Source Something Fashion)

Some of these ideas are also present in the book “Towards a New architecture”, where J.K Birksted describes Le Corbusier’s initiations in freemasons while looking into his early years in La Chaux-de-Fonds. These freemasons influences are present for many in the “Promenade Architecturale", one of Le Corbusier 1920s villas, a resemblance of the "Trois Voyages" of masonic initiation.

Apart from many other influences, these initiations and explorations in some alternative and non-traditional areas of knowledge, allowed Le Corbusier settle the basis of his revolutionary architectural ideas and become a reference in the centuries to come.

ANCIENT CONSTRUCTIONS MISTERIES

Pyramids are monumental structures constructed with stone or brick and having a rectangular base and four sloping triangular or trapezoidal sides with an apex. Pyramids have been built at various times in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, western Asia, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, India, Thailand, Mexico, South America, and on some islands of the Pacific Ocean. Those of Egypt and of Central and South America are the best known.

Among them all, Egyptian pyramids are the most recurrent in terms of architecture and construction analysis as well as a never ending source of mystery and conspiracy theories. Despite our desire to understand the ancient Egyptian civilization, there is a mystery at the heart of their mastery of architecture and engineering about their incredible technological acuity that might indicate that these civilizations were in possessed or knew something we have since forgotten.

The pyramids of ancient Egypt were funerary edifices. They were built over a period of 2,700 years, ranging from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the close of the Ptolemaic period.

Like time capsules, the pyramids are physical symbols of ancient wisdom. Made of glittering golden limestone, and always remaining around a cool 20 degrees centigrade inside, they provide glimpses of an ancient society that once neared the kind of technological intelligence we possess today..

Step Pyramid:

Egypt’s first pyramid is known as the Step Pyramid. It was built in honor of a pharaoh named Djoser (sometimes spelled Zoser), who ruled during Egypt’s third dynasty. Like most pyramids, it is first and foremost a tomb, designed to provide the souls of its occupants with the most opulent afterlife possible. 

Step Pyramid - Source Live Science

Historians believe that the Step Pyramid was designed by an architect named Imhotep, who played an important role as the patron saint of modern physicians. The pyramid was initially built as a mastaba tomb – a structure with a flat roof and sloped sides. Constructed using 11.6 million cubic feet of stone and clay, the pyramid hides inside around 5km of mysterious tunnels, countless rooms, as well as several courts, altars, and an underground palace. The king’s sarcophagus lies at the very bottom of the subterranean labyrinth of passageways, many of which lead to false doors or branch off to additional clusters of tunnels. 

After the Step Pyramid's completion, construction of similar structures took off. In Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty (2680-2560 BCE), the more familiar smooth-sided pyramid form was developed. Eventually, this would lead to the construction of the greatest pyramid of all.

Giza Pyamid Complex:

In the heart of the city of El Giza stands the Giza Pyramid Complex, also known as the Necropolis, containing three pyramids: the Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Though each was created for a different pharaoh, many historians are convinced that their collective design is cohesive and intentional, as the arrangement of these structures is possibly a representation of the Orion constellation, as the first connection between these pyramids and the Astrology.

Giza Pyramid Complex - Source Science News

The Complex’s main construction is the Great Pyramid, believed to have been built under the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops, as the tomb where the king would complete his transformation into a god in the afterlife. Today, it is a mind-blowing construction even watched from our present knowledge and technologies. It stands 146.7 m high and 234.4 m wide, assembling 2.5 million stone blocks, some of which came from over 500 miles away. This may bring the first conspiracy theories of how without wheels this building could have been erected in only 20 years. 

Whoever designed and built these pyramids had incredibly detailed knowledge and architectural skill that is difficult to reach even in our days. We also need to add that when completed, the pyramid looked over the city and its corners were almost exactly aligned to the north, using stars such as Polaris to orient their work.

Naturally, “alternative theories” are abundant and some of them argue about some alien help during the construction. Some of these theories believe that in order to do such constructions, it would have been necessary to have some bird’s eye view. Certainly, the Great Pyramid’s inner network of passageways and chambers is so complex that it’s not hard to understand why people believed that some kind of divinity or super-intelligence was involved. While we don’t know the exact details of how they were built, we do know for sure that the pyramids were built by skilled Egyptian craftsmen who lived in nearby compounds during the project. Today, most scholars believe that the pyramid stones were lifted from nearby quarries, and put in place with some kind of rudimentary pulley system. There is also some evidence that the stones were transported along the Nile River on boats via a canal system. Even though the pyramids’ construction appears to be miraculous, they were definitely made by human hands. 

 Construction and the Number Phi:

They also believe that in order to create an object that obeys the so-called Golden Ratio, a mathematical relationship based on the special number Phi, the Egyptians would have needed help from outside sources. The construction of the Great Pyramid is based on a superposition of Golden Triangles (based on the number phi) with almost perfect accuracy.

Even if the Egyptians only understood phi through their integer approximations, the fact that the pyramid uses them shows that there was likely some understanding and intent of their mathematical importance in their application. It’s possible though that the pyramid dimensions could have been intended to represent only one of these numbers, either pi or phi, and the mathematics would have included the other automatically.

Graphic Source Goldennumber.net

Inca Constructions Mysteries:

Not far from Egypt amount of theories and in the same line, there are hundreds of millenary constructions in America, some dated from 3000 years ago and showing building technologies that do not match those times.

Among them all, there is the 30,000-year-old ancient site of Sacsayhuaman in Peru. The amazing of this site is that the stones used in the construction fit like a puzzle without the help of any kind of glue and so accurately that in some of them there is no space for a sheet of paper. These stones are up to 8.5 m high and almost 200 tons of weight. Even today, as it happens with the pyramids, it is not known how they did to move such a large rock and specially handling them with such accuracy.

Left: Sacsayhuaman Puzzle Stones - Source Hidden Inca Tours

Right: Sacsayhuaman Stone Wall - Source Pinterest

On the other hand, the mysterious zigzag disposition of Sacsayhuaman walls reveal an ancient knowledge of astronomical alignments of the moon, the sun and the planet, existing around 9 astronomical references in total, which serve to measure and predict lunar and sun eclipses.

This has given origin to many alternative theories such as the invention of complex crystal lenses by the Incas lenses to take advantage of the sun’s rays and to create enough heat to melt the stone. There is also some room for the Aliens theory and how they came to help the Incas with their technology.

There are other sites in the world with these similarities such as Ishango (Africa), in the Lascaux and Chauvet caves (Africa) in Europe.

EL ESCORIAL AND THE GATE TO HELL

The Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, commonly known as Monasterio del Escorial was a former historical residence of the King of Spain , about 45 km from Madrid. El Escorial holds two magnificent architectural complexes: the Royal Monastery and La Granjilla de La Fresneda places that showed the power of the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic religion predominance in Spain.

Apart from the cultural and historical value, there is a legend over the location of the building. Philip II of Spain, the king at that time, was looking for a good place in the mountains close to Madrid to commemorate the victory in the battle of Saint Quentin (that happened in France in 1557, August 10th, feast day of Saint Lawrence). At the same time the place could include an elegant burial place for his father, the Emperor Charles I, (died in 1558), his mother, his first wife, and many other members of the Habsburg family, as well as for him in future. He was planning a huge building, with the pantheon, a big basilica, a monastery for 100 monks, an impressive library and a palace where he could live sometimes. And it would be devoted to Saint Lawrence, so to commemorate the battle of Saint Quentin.

El Escorial Floorplan - Source Wikipedia

His assistants gave him several options for locations, but he was interested in El Escorial because of a dark story he has had heard about it. He had previously known about of the legend of the door to hell in that area and according to that legend, there was an old mine that had opened the hell’s door, making it possible for the devil to come in and out through it. Philip II decided to seal the devil’s exit, purify the place and set this religious building, an evidence of the Catholic power but above all, his power.

The construction location was also chosen to keep the same latitude as Rome in order to highlight the importance of El Escorial as the hearth of Catholic Faith. The building was also erected according to astrological coordinates. In fact, it has always been compared to the Temple of Solomon. Both chroniclers of the 16th and 17th centuries and contemporary experts on the subject have agreed that the Temple of Solomon and the Monastery of El Escorial have many similarities: a portico followed by a courtyard open to the sky, followed by a second portico and a second courtyard, all flanked by arcades and enclosed passageways, leading to the “holy of holies”.

NEW AGE AND ALTERNATIVE ARCHITECTURES

In the recent years there has been a major interest in alternatives and more esoteric ways of design, searching for a better ideal of function, flow, and harmony into the visions of architectural design.

Maharishi Vastu Architecture:

Maharishi Vastu Architecture (MVA) is a set of architectural and planning principles assembled by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and based on "ancient Sanskrit texts". It has some resemblance with the oriental principles of Feng Shui.

Principles of Maharishi Vastu Architecture

MVA design has strict rules governing the orientation and proportions of a building. The principles of orientation are based on the position of the sun, considered by MVA to be the most powerful natural influence on Earth. Aligning the structure with the rising sun (facing east) is considered by MVA a condition for the spiritual health of the building dwellers. According to the principles of MVA, the other three cardinal directions also have their corresponding influences. For example, homes with entrances facing west invite "poverty, lack of creativity and vitality," the north direction has some prosperity influence and the south direction has the influence of negativity, problems and suffering.

The most important factor in the design is the entrance, which must be either due east or due north. The MVA architects also considers the slope and shape of the lot, exposure to the rising sun, location of nearby bodies of water and the other buildings or activities in the nearby environment. MVA emphasizes the use of natural or "green" building materials.

Proponents claim that MVA homes have escaped wildfires that burned neighboring homes, and that businesses located in MVA office buildings have greater profit and lower absenteeism. Residents of MVA homes claim they felt vitality, calm and happiness when they moved into their Vedic houses.

Feng Shui Architecture:

The expression Feng Shui literally means “wind-water” in Chinese and consists in the oriental practice of positioning objects, structures and spaces in order to harmonize them with spiritual forces and energies. This system is based on the belief of the existence of Yin and Yang forces and the flow of energies (Qi) that may create positive and negative effects. It also includes the concept of The Bagua that relates with the placement of the objects that represent your life’s journey within a space. A Bagua is a chart that maps out your energy centres as they relate to a space. It’s grid-based, with each part of the grid representing an aspect of your life like power, fame, and family, among many other aspects.

Golden Gate School of Feng Shui - Source Feng Shui Architect Blog

Feng Shui is also influenced by orientation, placement and arrangement of plants and water elements regarding this orientation. Other elements such as crystals, mirrors and auspicious symbols are also taken into consideration. It takes several things into consideration.

In general, Feng Shui tries to harmonize the design of some space or structure with the concept of yin and yang and also incorporate the Five Elements Theory (Fire, Earth, Wood, Water, Metal). It examines the relationship that these five elements have into the space:

Here are some of the basic Feng Shui principles:

-     The preferred proportion of a home is square or rectangular, allowing an ideal function and harmony in the interior spaces and an energy efficient planning,

-     Feng Shui also aims to create spaces with natural light and enough ventilation and air flow, locating windows with operable function in the directions that allow for natural air flow throughout the interior spaces.

-     Work spaces need to be separated from working areas, setting designated walls for that purpose. This allows for proper energies within a designated room to flow without disruption of the activity that was originally intended for that specific space.

-     In resting areas, there should be avoided the sharp corners and protruding objects. Also, creating a proper space for storage is a must. Clutter restricts the flow of positive energy.

-     Entry ways are extremely important. Front doors should be solid and open inward to give a feeling of welcome upon entry. Additionally, entry ways should be kept clean and tidy of clutter to allow for positive energy to flow through.

-     There is an abundance of ways to implement Feng Shui into the architectural build of your home. If it’s an important piece of the puzzle for you, you certainly can enlist the help of an expert of the practice to work with your architect and interior designer to ensure the fundamentals are met.