Man and his House in the Himalayas : Ecology of Nepal

The building designs and their associate socio-religious representations described in the volume will therefore bear witness to traditional Nepali rural and urban housing. They deserve special attention from local people, architects, researchers and planners.

This book was first published in French in 1981 by CNRS, National Centre for Scientific Research (France), under the title L''Homme et la maison en Himalaya. It was subsequently published in English in 1991 by Sterling Publishers, in New Delhi. It seems to us--the author and the publisher--that the earthquakes that struck Nepal in April and May 2015 might be an appropriate opportunity, for obvious reasons, to republish it. These massive seismic events, along with the ineluctable effect of modernity and globalization, will no doubt sound the death knell for a large part of Nepalese vernacular architecture in the affected areas. In fact, this vernacular regional architecture, mostly farmhouses constructed by local builders with locally available materials, without using the services of a professional architect, is likely to gradually disappear.