Architettura Himalayana. Architettura tradizionale nella Valle di Kathmandu. Himalayan Architecture. Traditional architecture in the Kathmandu Valley

The Florentine architects Valerio Sestini and Enzo Somigli have been venturing in Asia, and more precisely in Nepal, for thirty years. Their research offers an exhaustive and articulate interpretation of the valley's complex architecture, in an original manner and outside the conventional norms previously used to analyze it. The index of the volume bears witness to this, not only showing an original formulation but also including new subjects such as the new Anglo-Indian architectural styles, the relationship between architecture and water, and urban spaces. In addition to the rich photographic documentation, the graphic reliefs of the Nepalese monuments are remarkable as well. Their accuracy is accompanied by the illustration of numerous structural details, so as to render even the minutest parts perfectly interpretable. The volume also presents a rare set of unpublished images and illustrations from the Hodgson collection, partly described by the scholar Alfred Foucher (1897), which were fortuitously discovered by the authors in the archives of the Guimét Museum in Paris, and that evoke all the fascination of a culture seriously in peril, if not lost.