Although I've read through the "css grid isn't meant to do this details", you can get fairly close to this with pure css grid, see here: https://github.com/wesbos/css-grid/blob/master/20%20-%20CSS%...

Here's the JSfiddle for that demo:

https://jsfiddle.net/cbjzped2/

The problem with that is that the grid rows are determined dynamically:

    .item.v2 {
      grid-row: span 2;
    }
    .item.v3 {
      grid-row: span 3;
    }
    .item.v4 {
      grid-row: span 4;
    }
    .item.h2 {
      grid-column: span 2;
    }

I'd much rather drop in a library like MagicGrid or Masonry and deal with it from there, to be honest, instead of trying to hack grid to do it. I think grid could be extended to handle this kind of design but until it is...

But, grid and/or flex box could still do these things by nesting I assume?

So do you mean this is a less complex, more sane way, or did you mean it enables things that couldn’t be done with grid/flex?

Of course sanity is good but it’s an important distinction, say if a simple scenario could avoid a library dep without much extra complexity.

I'm not sure -- the problem is that the height is determined across the whole row -- as soon as you have one item bigger than others in a row it falls apart.

Some of the auto sizing features of grid make it seem like it could work but I haven't seen too many examples, and rachelandrews saying "it's not built for that" is more than enough to discourage me from trying to hack around it.