KVPT’s Patan Darbar Earthquake Response Campaign - Work to Date - September 2016

of KVPT’s Earthquake Response Campaign. Harishankara
will receive many of the same considerations for
reinforcement of plinth and foundations as the Char
Narayan, while needing special attention to the open
colonnade of timber pillars surrounding the sanctum at
the plinth level and supporting the lowest roof. Work
on the Harishankara will provide information on the
additional challenges of the arcaded variation on the
multi-tiered temple type, many of which collapsed in a
similar way in 2015 and will need similar seismic work.
Manimandapas:
Small historic buildings posing great structural design
challenges
The open timber-pillared building type exemplified by
the Manimandapas was identified as a critical design
challenge for rebuilding because of the difficulty of inserting
vertical reinforcement in an open plan with no
walls to conceal it. This model project is treated extensively
in the following section to describe in detail the
multiple issues, the creative design process, and the specific
conservation and aesthetic challenges.
As it happens, the Manimandapas (or mandapa - in Nepali),
a pair of small platforms supporting open, arcaded
single-story pavilions flanking the entrance to the
sunken hiti at the north end of the palace and facing
the Vishveshvara - are an extraordinary and complex
case study. Elements of the patis have been changed over
the centuries, but the four central columns of the south
Manimandapa appear to date as far back as the 14th or
13th century. Both mandapa collapsed down to their
plinths in the April 25 earthquake, falling toward the
sunken stepwell to the east. The project is a restoration
of their damaged columns and a complete rebuilding.
Challenging, diminutive, and yet prominent because
of their history and antiquity, the Manimandapas with
their many timber pillars present important conservation
issues. On the one hand, the strategy will have to
include the modern foundation interventions that are
now de facto/imperative (because responsible solutions
require modern materials) and are the new frontier with
the permitting agency, the Department of Archaeology.
This is where our projects meet the biggest local political
challenge - government resistance to soil testing and
exploratory excavation (re: the unexplored palimpsest of
archaeology, which to date has never been investigated
in order to allow projects to proceed)- plus the “no new
materials” mantra that precludes the all-important unified
foundation.
Manimandapas
Manimandapas in 2008 (left) and
after the earthquake on April 25
2015 (right), both structures fully
collapsed leaving damaged plinths
behind after the earthquake.
Photographs by Stanislaw Klimek and
Suresh Lakhe, 2008 and April 25, 2015
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