KVPT

The Patujva Agam restoration project gave back to the city of Patan and the world a rare architectural treasure, one of the handful of esoreric shrine buildings used by the royal priests, an architectural monument of internation stature.

The building was ruinous in 1992 when the project was identified. Without this initiative the building would certainly have been lost, it's advanced state of disrepair justifying the owners' application to rebuild in 1991. Instead, a long process of neogotiation was initiated which proposed careful in situ repair and subsidized the local contribution of the owners to achieve an international standard of building repair. The building notably remains in the hands of the priestly family which first built the structure. Thus in its restored state it can be used again for the religious rituals of this priestly clan resident in the adjacent courtyards. 

Conceptually, the project is an important precedent in preservation in Nepal for a number of reasons. First, owned by a religious confraternity or guthi, it is one of the first semi-private monuments to be restored with international assistnace. Unitl now international attention ahs only concentrated on government owned or public buildings, ignoring the hundreds of threatened A-ckass monuments under semi-private (guthi or sangha) or private ownership. For this special case, the project developed a model tripartite agreement bewteen the owners, KVPT and the Departmetn of Archaeology, a framework which both protected it in the future and allowed turn-key implementation by KVPT. Contributions and agreement stipulations also included a substantial local contribution of approximately $5000.

Secondly, the project, at the time of inception, stood on the outside of the delineated World Heritage Site. The rallying of funds for a structure which defined by stoon outside the boundary line, i.e. an unlisted monument, was an important precedent for international attention to historical buildings which are key to the understanding fo Nepalese heritage but are until now unprotected. 

Thirdly, the seismic strengthening og this monument introduced a new approach to protecting the fragile masonry structures of Nepalesearchitecture. Instead of rebuilding the walls, the existing masonry sturctures were left untouched wherever possible and a new reinforcing, "back-up frame", somewhat like an interior scaffolding was introduced on the interior. Previously, all seismic strengthening measures in Nepal had introduced concrete ring beams into the existing wall fabric" - KVPT - 1996 - Patukva Agam Final Report