Mandala Urbanism Landscape and Ecology: Interpreting Classic Indian texts and Vaastupurusha mandala as a framework for organizing towns

This book makes a unique contribution to the scholarship on urbanism by shedding light on a marginally discussed or known spatial organizational framework of Vaastupurusha mandala, that precedes the western grid planning treatises. This is done through a focused investigation of select Hindu temple towns in India. Through the premise of “mandala urbanism”, the book considers urban pattern and form as an agency of environmentally responsive design. The partis of classic Mandala are used as a foundational formwork to read, reveal, and generate new combinatorial compound Mandalas. The creative interpretations offer malleable grounds to start revising both the previously and presently practiced design to intentionally influence landscape, urbanism, and ecology of the place. The book makes the classic Indian town planning approach and ideas accessible to architecture, landscape, and planning students worldwide; a seminal text bridging the semantics and design approaches from the west and the east.