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What is the Vastu Grid in Vastushastra, and How Can It Improve Space Planning?

While working on projects in real life after college, I often found myself questioning the feel of a space not just how it functioned, but how it responded. Some spaces followed every thumb rule of planning, yet didn’t feel right. Others, without any over design vocabulary, just felt balanced. That’s when I began exploring Vastu Shastra. Not as a rulebook passed down by tradition, but as a spatial framework that could align architecture with energy, orientation, and well-being.

Understanding the Vastu Grid:

 At the core of Vastu is the Vastu Purusha Mandala a 9x9 grid dividing a plot into 81 zones. Each square corresponds to specific energies and directions:

• Northeast (Ishanya): clarity, water, ideal for entrances or spiritual areas

• Southeast (Agneya): fire, energy, perfect for kitchens or active zones

• Southwest (Nairutya): weight, grounding, best suited for bedrooms or private areas

• Center (Brahmasthan): meant to remain open or free of weight to let energy circulate

This grid isn’t meant to restrict creativity. It offers a spatial logic that responds to sun, wind, light, and flow. When overlaid on a plan, it helps align built forms with natural forces—something architects already do, just in a different language.

Proportion, Orientation, and Alignment

What caught my attention in Vastu wasn’t superstition. it was its silent understanding of geometry, proportion, and directional logic.

Charles Correa often placed courtyards or sanctums in the heart of his buildings, not because of Vastu, but because the space needed it. B.V. Doshi’s institutional works, like IIM Bangalore, reveal an instinctive respect for orientation and hierarchy, principles echoed in Vastu Shastra. Even Le Corbusier, in Chandigarh, used solar geometry and massing to respond to direction and climate.

Vastu isn’t about placement alone. It’s about how a space breathes, how transitions are handled, how daylight enters, and how zones relate to each other. It allows you to optimise space layout for positive energy flow without losing design integrity

 A Residential Example — Light but Grounded

While working on one of the residential apartment projects in Pune, we used the Vastu grid subtly, not to follow rules, but to understand the space logic.

Thus, living area naturally fell in the northeast, getting good daylight throughout the day. The kitchen aligned to the southeast, well-lit and ventilated.

The master bedroom shifted to the southwest, giving it more enclosure and privacy.

We left the central zone uncluttered, creating openness and better movement.

The result wasn’t labelled “Vastu-compliant,” but it worked. The space felt grounded, open, and aligned—without we ever having to explain why.

What It Teaches Us in Architecture

Today, even when though you don’t use the entire grid, you can still carry simple Vastu’s lessons forward:

 • Keep the centre free when possible.

• Try to focus on orientation of a building as much as possible Spend more time than you think on it.

• Orient active, light-receiving zones toward the north and east.

• Use heavier materials and calmer functions in the southwest.

• Let spaces respond to direction, not just geometry.

These simple steps have helped me create spaces that are not only functional, but intuitive. Whether it’s a home, an office, or even an institutional building, the Vastu lens offers a way to enhance well being, improve functionality, and balance aesthetics with deeper spatial understanding.

Final Thoughts:

Architecture according to Vastu Shastra is not a checklist. It’s a way of thinking. A way to read a site, to listen to light, to respect movement and pause. As architects, we already work with proportion, light, orientation, and silence.

just sharpens that sensitivity. It lets us build not just structures, but spaces that live well, feel good, and quietly support those who use them.

And in the end, that’s what architecture is really about.