PHOTO ESSAY

JAN 04 - Four distinct elements—Durbar Square, Taumadhi Square, Dattatreya Square and the Pottery Square—combine to make up the whole of Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square. This is an area rich in cultural heritage, wherein many age-old Newar traditions and rituals still find continuity in the present day life of locals, part of the reason for which it has come to be enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 
What has always separated Bhaktapur most distinctly from other old settlements in the Valley, however, is its architecture. Although the smallest of the three Malla townships, great attention had been lavished here when the economy and patronage for the arts were at their peak between the 14th and 18th centuries, a time when Bhaktapur was practically overrun with prolific architectural activities. 
Over time, however, Bhaktapur’s landscape has been undergoing a steady transformation, first triggered, experts say, in 1769 AD, when Prithvi Narayan Shah amalgamated the towns to unify the country. The subsequent effects of advancements in functional requirements, infrastructural development and urbanisation that came of the years that followed, slowly became visible in changes in the very architectural character of the city.
Today, we find traditional design aesthetics becoming increasingly abandoned in favour of simpler façades. Those exquisitely carved wooden doors and windows, for instance, once a Bhaktapur staple, are slowly but surely disappearing, replaced by convertible shutters—modern, practical, generic. Wells, stone conduits and spouts all around the area are drying up because newly-made concrete foundations have blocked water channels. And these are just a few examples.
There is, right now, a choice to be made; whether to run with the technological advancements and the influence of the West on our design conceptions, or whether to perpetuate that which we’ve been handed down by our ancestors, those cultural gifts that have long made us unique. Perhaps there is a middle ground somewhere, where the aesthetics of the past can be aligned with the functionality of the present, and hopefully, we will be able to find it before time runs out and there is nothing to preserve.