#nepaliarchitecture

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Andes meets Himalaya

On a regular Saturday morning, the Auditorium of Alliance Française was filled to the brim. The opening of the Materia Awards Mountain Architecture Exhibition (MaMa ’26) brought together participants from five continents and twelve countries. Honorary Consul of Ecuador in Nepal, Shashi Kant Agrawal, Alliance Française Director Sylvain Choin and Carla Chavez opened beautifully, while our Rebika explained the curatorial concept of the event. She set the tone for an inspiring week of the materiality aspect of architecture.

Over 120 people came into the immersive and creative landscape of stories, materials, and mountain cultures. Rebika, Rashmi and Dheeraj gave an explanatory tour of the 9 striking exhibition panels inspired by the Andes and the Himalaya. The experience extended beyond visual display into a fully sensory encounter, where the scent, sound, and tactile presence of the raw straw on the floor has its positive sensory impact. Visitors and participants ranged from 4 to 81 years old.

With 7 inspiring speakers—Erica, Asmita, Dheeraj, Felipe, Dominique, Rashmi, and Riwaz—moderated by Kishore Thapa, Jharna Joshi and Prof. Anne, the afternoon stood for sharing, dialogues and reflections. Reading terrains, mapping, bamboo structure expressions, design with/for people, journey of MATERIA award, practice what you preach, design perspectives of the child, 720 degrees of Architecture: all in 3 hours!

Overwhelming feedback and lessons from Paris, Quito, and the fantastic audience made the conversations continue long after sunset. Next blog: the MamA ’26 “Get Your Hands Dirty” workshop.

See more : https://nepalitimes.com/architectural-kinship-between-kathmandu-and-quito

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Two years after a series of earthquakes devastated Nepal, one of our projects, a Model House in the hills of Silinge, Makwanpur is now completed. When founders of LiScha Himalaya e.V. approached us in 2015 to design the house, SMA and Lischa both had the vision of making this a building that demonstrates to the local carpenters and masons the methods of building earthquake resistant structures while using local skills and materials.

As the communities around Nepal start to rebuild their homes with limited resources, we feel it was important to show that we can use local skills, traditional & local materials and sustainable building practices to design seismically safe houses.

This Model House in the Chepang community of Silinge, built by LiScha Himalaya e.V. and Unity for Sustainable Develoment-Nepal (USD), takes inspiration from the local vernacular houses while boasting improvements to the local design. By using locally available stones, timber and bamboo, mud mortar and mud plaster along with vertical and horizontal timber ties that bind the masonry walls together…houses like this will be sustainable, earthquake resilient as well as easy to replicate by the local community.

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Initial sketch ideas and some on-going construction photos of a Sanepa office we’re upgrading. Stripped-back brickwork, recycled floor tiles, custom-made Mild Steel column and timber slat ceiling coming together rather nicely!

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

An example of how no project is too big or small for us. This is a very small intervention for an office room which had glare problems on the computer screen. In order to solve this problem and to optimize the space, we readjusted the size of the excessively wide door to a standard size, revised the layout and re-designed the desk to be of an optimum length with a sweet fold-able coffee stand on one side!

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

The existing toilets in the Habeli Outdoor Learning Center (HOLC) were not capable of handling the expected influx of new visitors so there was a need for more toilets. We also saw it as an opportunity to make it a demonstrative project to teach school children about ecological sanitation. 

We designed and built a dry compost toilet with heavy stone base and lighter timber structure on the top. Stones and wooden planks used for building the toilet were also salvaged from an old house that was demolished on the site. 

We followed a human waste disposal system that utilizes a water-less flush in conjunction with a tank in which urine and human fesses are collected separately and aerobic bacteria break down the waste, which later is used as fertilizer.

Client: HOLC SMA Team: Anne Feenstra, Bikash Palikhey, Aman Raj Khatakho, Bijay Shrestha

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Transitional Home in collaboration with #Art for Nepal

We were able to build a Transitional home at the Panauti village, near Banepa, 2 hours from Kathmandu , with help of a friend from Delhi , Mr. Rohan Patankar, who started a campaign by selling his paintings and arts named #Art For Nepal after the earthquake hit Nepal on 25th April 2015, to collect funds to help earthquake victims. 

This transitional home was built for Mrs. Januka Devi Sapkota , at Kuhartar-9, Kushadevi, Kavre with total 5 member in her family.

To learn more about Art for Nepal, please see: http://www.platform-mag.com/art/art-for-nepal.html

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Transitional Home: Concept

After the devastating earthquake struck on 25th April 2015, many families lost their homes. It will take time for them to recover, perhaps 4 to 5 years. As we believe families should live in a place that give them a sense of belonging, we designed a traditional home that is more than just a shelter, beyond emergency survival. 

The idea is that the material needed for the house would come from the rubble of destroyed houses. The only new element would be the corrugated steel roof for the outside roof. The inside ceiling would be made from from cloth or timber planks. The base of the wall is from stone. The wall is from planks and bamboo and door & window are salvaged from the houses destroyed by the earthquake.

A variation of shelters were designed & built based on site specific materials (bamboo, stone, planks & thatch). 

SMA Team: Ar. Bikash Palikhey, Ar. Rumi Singh Maharjan, Er. Bijay Shrestha & Sujan Shilpakar

[sustainablemountainarchitecture]

Sensus Studio. Swotha, Lalitpur

Within the World Heritage site of Patan, Swotha stands proud with its historic temples and Newar community. The space originally built in traditional Newari-style architecture with open plan and heavy wood structures has now been transformed into a more open lighter office space. Each elements that make the space has its own transformation story. They are:

1. Space Planning  2. Thinking Wall :For brainstorm sessions with professionals who work with Sensus to place their ideas, notes and memos on. The free-form shape was chosen to diffuse the strict pattern of the Newari brick wall. 3. Textile Wall  4. A personal table  5. A meeting table:The design is based on the communication that takes place amongst the different  people at the table. These tables are made with iron strips and painted in 7 different colors. 

Client: Reshu Aryal Dhungana SMA Team: Ar. Anne Feenstra, Ar. Bikash Palikhey, Ar. Himanshu Lal, Ar. Rumi Singh Maharjan