As a researcher on the performance cultures of the Valley, I believe this work running into 1,040 pages expands the sphere of knowledge and research about the cultural and architectural heritage of the Valley.[break]
First of all, it makes the readers familiar not only with the corpus of works produced on the arts and cultures of the Valley, ranging from collection of sketches to serious academic works produced by foreign and Nepali scholars over one and half a centuries but, importantly, also with the significant activities taking place in the domain of the urbanization and its impact on the paramparik architectures of the Valley in the current times.
While doing so Prof. Gutschow, a German architect and scholar, makes a critical study of the general assumptions and sweeping remarks made over the architectures and the urban spaces of the Valley.
He critiques the developmental approaches that the concerned authorities in the past had taken towards the urbanization of the Valley from the 1930s onwards.
He points out that even the approaches taken and put forward by the donor institutions and their experts regarding the future trails of the urbanization in the Valley in the 1960s and the 1970s was more romantic than practical.
Similarly, he blames the concerned authorities for not taking up any cudgels to learn and to get inspiration from the locally available tried and tested modes and manners of urbanization but only setting out to depend on the donors and their prescriptions.
As a result, urban planning of the Valley failed miserably.
Therefore, readers and researchers involved in the research activities about the history of urban settlements in the Valley of the earlier periods and of the modern times find this book very useful.
Unlike several important books, which dwell more on the past than the present states of the paramparik architectures of the Valley, Newar Architecture in three volumes takes a balanced view.
It updates the readers with the modern and contemporary forces, which have directly and indirectly influenced, ruined and defined the paramparik architectures of the Valley of the current states.
It introduces and elaborates the urban contexts of the Newars, the urban fabrics, the units of space and the architectural fragments of the Newars. Gutschow also elaborates the works of the first-generation modern architects of Nepal and abroad.
He elaborates the efforts and energies that the first generation of modern architects in the Valley lived and failed to live by. Creating newer, dynamic and vibrant idioms of modern building out of the repertoire of paramparik architectures of the Valley was and is still possible.
The writer makes us to ponder over newer avenues of research that we need to produce further.
This work provides readers new insights to look into the architectures developed during the Rana regime.
It gives credit to the Newar artisans for creating not only the famous palaces of the Malla kings, now metaphors of the rich architectural heritage of the Valley, but also more than forty palaces which the Rana rulers built in Kathmandu and Patan cities in the second half of their regime (1880s-1940s).
The Rana palaces, as Prof. Gutschow argues, evoke the power of the Newar artisans of the then period. They held such a rich repertoire of skills and crafts of playing with building materials that they, in a matter of few decades, created not only the biggest palace in Asia but also very majestic and sophisticated forms which were foreign to their ancestors.
Thus the Rana palaces can also be taken as the production of the Newar architectures as the artisans, the real creators or doers were the Newars, the custodians of the great architectural heritage of the land.
As far as my reading about the arts and architectures of the Valley goes, this is a very new and wiser statement. No matter how indifferent the Rana rulers were to the rich architectural heritage of the Valley, their subjects, the Newar artisans, indirectly conquered the Ranas with the kind of architectural performances they did in newer forms to gratify the interests and fantasy of the Ranas.
As a theatre person, I draw relationship between the artists who used to stage plays in the Hindi and Urdu language in the so called Parsi theatres in the palaces for the Rana audiences, and the artist commoners who showed their talents through the construction of palaces for the Ranas.
Together, these artists form one of the most creative forces of the Rana regime.
Newar Architecture provides sufficient information and critical ideas to look again into the architectural history of the Valley and come with newer and significant realization.
This work, no doubt a result of Prof. Gutschow’s lifelong, (over forty years now), involvement in the research and preservation and renovation of the architectural and cultural objects of the Valley, is a landmark in the domain of research on the architectural heritage of the Newars.
Cultures and architectures of the Kathmandu Valley have probably remained the most chosen domains of studies undertaken by scholars around the globe for several decades.
In the contexts of unplanned urbanization and the overflow of migrants to the Valley because of the centralized developmental policies that the governments in the past have had practiced, these formations have become one of the most threatened cultural and artistic objects of value in the present social and cultural contexts.
And, despite some significant supports from several donor countries, institutions and individuals, they have become things that need to be ‘protected’ in the very land where they flourished for ages.
In such developmental and urban contexts of the Valley, Newar Architecture enables its readers to realize the ‘mistakes’ made during the historical process of modern urbanization in the Valley.
There are opportunities for those who can learn from the mistakes. For this, they need to internalize the history, its achievements and failures. That is precisely what the author of the book wants us to do.
Moreover, this book shows several trails that researches can follow further. For example, it briefly introduces the changes that the real estate business or housing companies have been bringing to the cityscapes of the Valley.
There are several other issues, which Prof. Gutschow leaves for new researchers to take on.
This work, published by the Canada-based publication house, Serindia Publications, in 2011 is a must read for students, academics, bureaucrats, researchers and lovers of Newar architectures.
The drawings by Bijay Basukala together with historically important photographs give this tome a rich artistic grandeur as one can still see in the Malla palaces of the Valley.
My request to the writer and the publishing houses of the Kathmandu Valley that include both governmental and private institutions is to make this book available among the common readers at an affordable price.
To conclude, as a reader of Niels Gutschow’s articles and chapters from books and Newar Architecture, I think he is one of the most important names in the heritage of research in the domain of the architectures of the Kathmandu Valley carried out so far.
Shiva Rijal, with a PhD on cross-cultural theatre, teaches Drama at the Central Department of English, TU, and now has been conducting research on the public open spaces of the Kathmandu Valley.
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