Crafts and craft traditions in Tibetan architecture

Building crafts emerge from the ongoing interaction between relatively stable local knowledge, skills and materials, and more dynamic external influences. This project focuses on the processes and effects involved in the contemporary transformation of building crafts in Himalayan vernacular architecture, where such traditions still predominate but where they are undergoing a period of accelerating change and decline. A wide range of dynamic natural and anthropogenic conditions (such as material resources, climate, and socio-economic factors) give rise to various patterns of adaptation. Focusing on carefully selected regions with strong local building craft traditions, this project explores these transformations and their drivers at the level of building structures, techniques and materials, as well as the social frameworks within which construction takes place and meaning is assigned to the built environment.

Collaborators:
Calum Blaikie, Tsering Drongshar

Financing:
Innovationsfonds „Forschung, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft“, ÖAW