In the wake of Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake, entire villages faced a hard reality. Generational stone walls collapsed, traditional homes turned into rubble, and families lost both shelter and pieces of their history.
The quake killed nearly 9,000 people, with most deaths tied to the collapse of more than 600,000 houses. Across the country, schools, monasteries, temples, and community buildings suffered heavy damage. In many places, damaged masonry homes were demolished and replaced with reinforced concrete buildings, which many families viewed as a safer reset.
But the shift raised a new question. What gets lost when traditional masonry housing disappears?
Nepal’s traditional homes rely on locally available stone, brick, timber, and mud mortar. They also reflect construction knowledge shaped by the Himalayan climate and rural life, including features like the Bhakari for grain storage, attic storage space, the Pidi front porch, and the central Ageno fireplace.
The article also points to practical constraints that construction teams know well: material costs, access to skilled labor, transportation challenges in remote mountain regions, and dispersed settlements. For many communities, replacing every home with engineered reinforced concrete is not realistic at scale.
That’s driving renewed attention to strengthening existing masonry housing. A 2020 study by Rohit Kumar Adhikari and Dina D’Ayala documented social and functional challenges in some post-quake rural housing. The researchers also reported on an about 80-year-old traditional masonry house that survived three major earthquakes, including the 2015 event, and identified timber features that helped its earthquake resistance.
Building on that kind of evidence, a joint PhD project between the University of Melbourne and IIT Kanpur is launching field investigations, advanced numerical modeling, and large-scale experimental testing to identify strengthening techniques suited to traditional masonry homes across Nepal, northern India, and Bhutan. For mason contractors and local builders, the direction is clear: document what exists, learn from structures that stood through past quakes, and validate upgrades through testing before bringing them into wider practice.
Read the full, original article from OnlineKhabar English News here.