EXTERIOR DESIGN OF TOWN HOUSES AND THEIR EXTENSION/RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS WITH REGARD TO EAVES TYPES IN A WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE SITE OF A NEPALI CITY (2018)

The paper deals with the exterior design of town houses both inside and outside monument zone of the eastern part of Bhaktapur in Kathmandu Valley registered as a World Cultural Heritage site in 1979. This paper consists of following four steps. 1) Firstly, authors composed the original format of survey sheet for Nepali town houses. The categories of this sheet are grouped into four items, which are frame, silhouette, part and element, each of which contains more detailed categories. The survey sheet was completely made from scratch with reference to the several important existing researches. The number of samples are 104 buildings inside Monument Zone (core + buffer zone) of World Cultural Heritage and 73 buildings outside Monument Zone. More than 90 % of the total sample buildings are classified as townhouses. 2) Secondly, the paper tries to submit a hypothesis on that either a town house experienced the extension of the upper floors or totally reconstructed during the course of time. Authors propose ‘eaves types’ as the key idea in this hypothesis. Eaves types are classified into 8 types depending on which floor level eaves are attached to. Eaves types are classified into three upper level groupings, i.e. pitched eaves group, flat eaves group and without eaves group. As for structure, pitched eaves group are basically masonry construction as opposed to the RCC construction (confined masonry) or mixed structure (masonry wall + RCC beams, masonry + RCC rooftop) for flat eaves group. In addition, three-storey buildings of without eaves group turned out to be masonry construction and four-storey buildings of the same group chiefly consist of RCC construction. The former eaves type shows similar characteristic to pitched eaves group. So does the latter to flat eaves group. Regarding the relations among eaves types, the paper made an attempt to establish a diagram that explains the transition among important eaves types whether an eaves type is reconstructed or just upper floors are extended. 3) Result of the exterior design survey is primarily compared between inside and outside Monument zone of world cultural heritage. Further analysis is conducted by two levels as needed, i.e. comparison among eaves group and that among eaves types. The items to be examined here are frontage, roof shapes, roofing materials, finishing on the first floor wall, openings on the first floor as well as on the third floor, wood carving, window lattice and cornice between the second and the third floor. The result turned out show distinct characteristics among eaves types or eaves groups that led authors to provisional proof of the hypothesis with eaves types. 4) Eaves types are finally confirmed with the construction period and upper floor extension period. In Nepal, for the past one century, prior to Nepal-Gorkha earthquake in April 2015 earthquake, two devastating earthquakes happened. They are Bihal-Nepal Earthquake in January 1934 and India-Nepal border region earthquake in August 1988. These years are applied to separation of periods for recovery from the disaster was the chances to reconstruct the affected buildings. The result of the comparison of reconstruction/extension periods with eaves types again very well explained the characteristics of each eaves type.