Forgotten international starchitects in Nepal

Four international names in architecture, Shigeru Ban, Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando and Louis Isadore Kahn, all left their mark in Nepal. But despite their best intentions, the ambitious designs fizzled out.

Ban, Koolhaas and Ando won Pritzkers, the best known international award for architecture, and Kahn could have won it had the prize been given in his lifetime. But their designs fell short of transforming Nepali architecture and did not help inspire local architects. 

Why were these four ‘starchitects’ unable to pull off their Nepal projects and enrich the country with exemplary contemporary designs? The failure, especially the violation of Kahn’s design, also raises larger questions about how much contemporary architecture is valued in Nepal. 

Whereas Sri Lanka had Geoffrey Bawa and Bangladesh had Mazharul Islam, the pioneers of contemporary architecture in Nepal have had far less public appreciation. One wonders if Nepali architecture only refers to the monuments and heritage of the past.

Nepal does have examples of outstanding modern architecture such as the  पाङ्रे घर ‘Wheel House’ and खुट्टे घर  ‘House on Legs’ by Shankar Nath Rimal in the 1960s. These are the best examples of how some Nepali designers successfully tailored modern architecture to the Nepali context. 

Ten years ago, Nepal had three architecture magazines, SPACES, praXis and Business Architecture, but none of these survived. This newspaper has prominently covered contemporary architecture, and the built environment, but these are exceptions in Nepal’s media.

There have been a few encouraging signs. The 2024 exhibition Modern Encounters in Architecture in Kathmandu Valley (1945-1985) at the Taragaon Museum had many visitors and its accompanying book is a seminal document. 

In 2023, the Mountain Architecture Dialogue (MAD) that focused on examples of good-practice sustainable contemporary architecture for the mountainous terrains of Nepal was a packed event with over 300 young architects, engineers, environmentalists and architecture students.

Shigeru Ban

Shigeru Ban had already built a name for himself in post-disaster construction when he came to Nepal following the 2015 earthquakes in which 500,000 people lost their homes. The basic design and its 3D-rendered images were reviewed in upbeat articles on DOMUS, Architectural Review, Dezeen, and Arch Daily. 

But his signature cardboard tubes could not handle the monsoon and the roof structure had to be re-designed with timber. Only two shelters were completed in Sindupalchok, and only one of them still stands at the Hyatt Regency grounds today, as Ban’s souvenir to Nepal. 

Rem Koolhaas

The designs of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas have a specific signature: bold shapes and an intriguing architectural typology that challenges standard building blocks. Some designs even seem to defy gravity, like the CCTV headquarters in Beijing: an angular, continuous geometry of glass and steel.

Koolhaas was commissioned by Belgian billionaire Guy Ullens to design a new building for Ullens School in Khumaltar. The most prominent feature is its vertical glass block staircase. Some interior spaces have lowered windowsills, which provide ample views and daylight. But the school building has gone unremarked in Nepal.

Tadao Ando

Doctors providing aid to victims of the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 in Japan requested Tadao Ando, who had donated his Pritzker money to the victims, to also make a design for a hospital in Butwal. 

Ando’s contribution would be pro-bono and the construction was funded by the Hanshin Earthquake victims and by the popular Japanese newspaper Mainichi, ass a tribute to Nepali doctors.

The first block that Ando designed for the Siddhartha Children and Women’s Hospital (SCWH) was the out-patient department. He quickly realised that he would not be able to pull off structures with his typical style of smooth-finished, high-quality concrete. 

Ando wrote in the online architectural catalog Architectuul, that the two main problems with the project were costs and the availability of local technology.

‘It became a facility that has a slightly different expression from the buildings I have completed so far,’ he wrote. He designed a colonnade for the west façade that would provide shelter from harsh sunlight, and the exposed brick walls were locally manufactured bricks. 

The hospital is characterised by modernist cuboidal massing, but the outer brick façades now appear unintentionally badly weathered by monsoons. The interiors lack both sufficient natural light and natural ventilation.

Louis I Kahn

American architect Louis I Kahn had experience of projects in South Asia, and several were under construction when he died suddenly in 1974. Amongst these were the National Assembly complex in Dhaka, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and the Family Planning and Maternal Child Welfare Centre in Kathmandu. 

Kahn had started the USAID funded project in Nepal by developing a master plan for the government institutional zone in Kathmandu, which included a building for the Health Ministry. The building’s façade in exposed brick has deeply recessed vertical windows for shading. 

The balancing of accentuated horizontal lines in the brickwork with the verticality of the larger composition is the work of a master. The brick walls rise up into punctured parapet walls at the roof level. These square apertures ‘frame the sky’.

When Kahn died, only the eastern half of the building was finished. The Western part was never built and Nepal’s bureaucrats decided that without paint, the exposed brick façade was not finished. Then in 1995, citing roof leakage and a space crunch, the Health Ministry added a floor. 

The frames-to-the-sky in the roof parapet were converted into windows and topped off with a sloping roof of corrugated steel sheets, whose only virtue was that it was cost-effective. 

Kahn’s orthogonal composition, which clean horizontal and vertical lines, was desecrated despite a public outcry and legal challenges from architects and cultural organisations.

Kenzō Tange

As Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant made a pilgrimage to Lumbini in 1967. He was a devout Buddhist from Burma, and wept on seeing the condition of the nativity site. 

He got King Mahendra to turn Lumbini into an international peace centre, and on return to New York set in motion an initiative to restore the sanctity of the site. Kenzō Tange, another Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect who designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, was tasked to draw up a masterplan. But Tange died in 2005 before the Lumbini plan was fully implemented.

Kenzō Tange belonged to the ‘Metabolist Movement’, a modern design style inspired by French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, and did not adhere to traditional Japanese design elements. Tange was renowned in post-war Japan, and also built the Tokyo Metropolitan Government towers. 

Today Lumbini adheres to Tange’s rectangular masterplan, with concentric circles around the inner sanctum of the Mayadevi Temple. The eastern side is set aside for the Hinayana school and the west for Mahayana Buddhism. Some have criticised the masterplan for being too geometric, and later monuments by various sects have spoilt the natural tranquility of the space.

The site also houses The Lumbini Museum which is being renovated and conserved with a recent grant from the US Embassy in Kathmandu.  

A version of this article was first published in HIMAL Southasian. Illustrations by Varun S Bapu.