High altitude houses | Ferrari

edoardo paolo ferrari

High altitude houses Vernacular Architecture of Ladakh

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Coordinatore | Scientific coordinator Saverio Mecca | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy Comitato scientifico | Editorial board Elisabetta Benelli | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Marta Berni | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Stefano Bertocci | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Antonio Borri | Università di Perugia, Italy; Molly Bourne | Syracuse University, USA; Andrea Campioli | Politecnico di Milano, Italy; Miquel Casals Casanova | Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain; Marguerite Crawford | University of California at Berkeley, USA; Rosa De Marco | ENSA Paris-La-Villette, France; Fabrizio Gai | Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, Italy; Javier Gallego Roja | Universidad de Granada, Spain; Giulio Giovannoni | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Robert Levy| Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; Fabio Lucchesi | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Pietro Matracchi | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Saverio Mecca | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Camilla Mileto | Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain | Bernhard Mueller | Leibniz Institut Ecological and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany; Libby Porter | Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; Rosa Povedano Ferré | Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; Pablo Rodriguez-Navarro | Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain; Luisa Rovero | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; José-Carlos Salcedo Hernàndez | Universidad de Extremadura, Spain; Marco Tanganelli | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Maria Chiara Torricelli | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Ulisse Tramonti | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Andrea Vallicelli | Università di Pescara, Italy; Corinna Vasič | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; Joan Lluis Zamora i Mestre | Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain; Mariella Zoppi | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

edoardo paolo ferrari

High altitude houses Vernacular Architecture of Ladakh

This book is the result of the studies carried out in the Department of Architecture University of Florence.

The volumes are subject to a qualitative process of acceptance and evaluation based on peer review, which is entrusted to the Scientific Publications Committee of the Department of Architecture (DIDA) with blind review system. Furthermore, all publications are available on an open-access basis on the Internet, which not only favors their diffusion, but also fosters an effective evaluation from the entire international scientific community.

book cover Kyagar Zimskhang.

progetto grafico

didacommunicationlab Dipartimento di Architettura UniversitĂ degli Studi di Firenze Susanna Cerri Gaia Lavoratti

didapress Dipartimento di Architettura Università degli Studi di Firenze via della Mattonaia, 8 Firenze 50121 Š 2018 ISBN 9788833380285

Stampato su carta di pura cellulosa Fedrigoni Arcoset

contents

Preface Saverio Mecca

7

Foreword Gerald Kozicz

9

Acknowledgements

11

Note to the text

13

Introduction

15

Environment, Culture and History Environment Positioning Ladakh Climate and Human Activities Availability of Materials

19 21 21 23 25

Culture and society People, Language and Religion Social Organization

29 29 30

Historical background Early Times From the First Dynasty to the Early Contacts with the West From the Loss of Independence to the Annexation to India A Brief Historiography of Houses On the Traces of a House Form

33 34 34 37 38 41

Villages Typologies of Settlement The Village Position Building Adaptation to Community Needs Pastureland and Village Names

51 53 56 60 64

The House The Name of a House Basic Principles for the Construction of a House The Use of Anthropometry as a Measuring Tool

67 69 72 75

Constituent Parts of the House Stables Fireplace Room Storage Rooms Guest Room and Rapsal Room Sunroom and Glass-room Toilet Sleeping Room Terraced Roofs and Verandas Prayer Room Connecting Spaces, House entrances and Gardens House as a Microcosm: The Symbolism of the House and its Protective Systems

77 77 82 91 93 95 97 98 99 103 106 107

House Construction Technology Main Phases of the Construction Process Rituals at the Beginning of the Construction / Soil Evaluation Foundations Masonry Mortar Non-Structural Partitions Battered Walls Timber Lacings Openings Horizontal Structures, Beam-Pillar System and Flooring Roofing Plaster Stairs

113 116 116 119 125 143 145 145 145 147 156 161 164 168

Bibliography

169

List of Interviews

175

preface Saverio Mecca

Dean of the Architecture School Università degli Studi di Firenze

The main scientific problem related to vernacular architectures is the reconstruction of the chains of values, knowledge and local production, undervalued for the past century on account of their difficulty to be managed from a standardized industrial and commercial point of view.

The main goal of the research by Edoardo Ferrari is to give a contribution to the conservation of Ladakh’s immaterial vernacular architectural heritage through a detailed documentation and analysis of building practices. Such work can be seen as part of a tradition of studies on vernacular architecture carried out at the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence for decades, since Valerio Sestini’s field research in Nepal and the Himalayas in the 1970s. The Department has developed special attention to vernacular architecture collaborating with international projects in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Research and publications integrate different approaches, like technology and history, paying due attention to contemporary issues such as environmental, cultural and economic sustainability.

The process of valorization of vernacular architecture cultures is an exemplary case, started some decades ago and sustained by important international committees such as UNESCO. Research on vernacular heritage started partly because of the loss of building knowledge from the past, linked to the original contexts. On the other hand studies were carried out on the revival of this knowledge through an evolutionary framework organized on the basis of social, economical, and technical expectations and requirements.

Vernacular architectures are a strategic cultural heritage because they are characterized by: • a high level of technical variability and integration in geographical and cultural environments together with their traditionally ecological and effective energy performances, which is of utmost relevance; • consistent level of ‘tacit’ and local knowledge, of technical and procedural competence and of information on local materials; • solutions related to the durability (in the chemical and physical sense) of the artefacts and to seismic vulnerability.

The local building systems are based on a deep knowledge of each local building culture, on local technical heritage and on empirical research into the physical, energetic and structural behaviour of materials and land, which form the roots of varying identities.

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

The field of interest of the research is the valorization of Ladakh architectural heritage, as a contribution aimed at stimulating a wholly sustainable development of that region.

The complexity of the cultural, social and technical variability of Ladakhi Vernacular Architecture, together with the contemporary issues connected with rapid change in the economic system and the introduction of new communication means in the region is also related to the loss of local technical knowledge.

Ladakhi Vernacular Architectural Heritage conservation can be successful only if such construction culture can be sustainable building technology in all senses. It is possible to safeguard the values of diffused quality in a widespread architectural heritage only if this building culture is kept alive.

In this sense, conservation issues have to be faced through methodologies and tools concerning design and project management. The design of new architecture and heritage conservation require a combination of specific scientific and experimental knowledge, used together with local and tacit knowledge systems, which, at present, are dispersed, unconnected and, in some cases, lost.

Insufficient knowledge is, in fact, at the base of the perceived risk of unreliability of local building technology. Materials are considered ‘poor’, not only from a structural point of view. Nevertheless, the particular use of local materials is a peculiar expression of regional diversity, which varies in relation to the cultural and natural characteristics of the place.

The work by Edoardo Ferrari is an important contribution to a wider recognition of the value of Ladakhi vernacular architecture and therefore to the conservation and of this important cultural heritage.

foreword Gerald Kozicz

Commonly, the term ‘high-altitude desert’ is used to label the climatic condition of Ladakh. In fact, Ladakh is a desert as far as vegetation is concerned, but its landscape has little in common with the general idea of a desert of endless dunes. From the perspective of the Indus River, the major stream of the region, Ladakh begins where the Tibetan north-western section of the Tibetan Plateau ends. There, at an altitude of approximately 4100 meters above sea level, the ruined fortresses of Nyoma and the mud villages recall the days when this gate to Ladakh had to be heavily protected against the East not only with forts but with guardian deities, a protection at all levels. This is where the gorges start, where the Indus and its various tributaries cut their ways through the mountains. In Purig, today Lower Ladakh, the Indus Valley is already as low as 2700 meters. Accordingly, the geography of Ladakh is dominated by valleys and deep gorges, some of which are inaccessible in certain seasons, while others are not passable at all, forcing travelers to use other routes and trails. Ladakh is practically a network of routes and corridors that traverse the Western Himalayas and the Karakorum, where permanent settlements were only possible in small pockets along those routes. It is a region with few resources of any kind and where hibernation would seem the only logical response during winter.

Such harsh conditions demanded simple and efficient strategies, first to establish and then to sustain a society. Overwhelming natural conditions on the one hand and minimum resources on the other hand demanded simple and efficient answers to the basic questions of life. The result might be understood as a perfect case of sustainable planning. This is probably the crucial point of this publication, namely to understand the vernacular architecture of Ladakh as one integral aspect of sustainable thinking. Vernacular architecture is by nature a logical response to the climate and dependent on the available resources. However, the term sustainability — in particular how the author introduces the term into the discussion — reaches beyond the actual construction process and the built structures. While the use of local material and traditional building methods create a strong physical bond between the natural environment and the architecture, the ‘house’ is also a reaction to the meta-physical conditions created by such overwhelming conditions. The house not only protects against the climatic forces, it is also instrumental in creating and sustaining the social order. It is a response to the environmental factors both on the physical and metaphysical level. The various symbols and ritual instruments on the façades protecting against evil spirits as well as the symbolism connected to various parts of the interior are ample evidence of the complexity behind these structures. There is more behind the simple floor plans and walls made of mud and stone, and roofed with wooden beams, than meets the eye at first glance.

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

This publication not only provides us with a comprehensive study of the practical aspects of traditional housing and design, but it also explains the various socio-cultural implications of domestic architecture. In my understanding, the integration of socio-cultural aspects into the discussion of vernacular architecture is the core of an analysis that deals with sustainability. In this sense the architecture of Ladakh may be regarded as a perfect case study.

Based on in-depth field research and interviews this work is also a documentation of a culture on the verge of falling into oblivion. Modernization has already caused the loss of a significant part of the cultural heritage of Ladakh, regarding the material as well as the immaterial culture and their many socio-cultural implications. Thus, this publication will hopefully contribute to the current discussions on cultural heritage preservation, integrating a broader concept of sustainability.

acknowledgements

This work is the result of innumerable combinations of events that allowed me to take on a research project for the first time. I am grateful to many people for the completion of this work, from the beginning of this project, starting with my master thesis, to the publication of this volume. This was possible thanks in particular to my family and friends. I want to thank my professor Mario Carlo Alberto Bevilacqua for trusting me during the realization of the whole project from the very beginning, for his long time support, and for broadening my point of view on research. I would also like to thank the Department of Architecture (DIDA) of the University of Florence, its dean professor Saverio Mecca and all the professors that have guided me during these years in Italy and abroad. I want to thank Gerald Kozicz for trusting me enough to let me collaborate with him on his research in Ladakh and for helping me as my co-supervisor during the development of my thesis. I am also very grateful to him for his precise comments on the contents of the text during the revision, and for his many references to his fieldwork and personal experience. I owe a debt of gratitude to architect John Harrison for his help and support, and for his long time commitment to the preservation of Himalayan heritage, which was a source of inspiration for me. Thanks again to John and Sheila who had very kindly helped me with the English revision of the final work.

I am grateful for the hospitality and the support from the Ladakhi people during my long stay, which also made me learn something beyond the mere field of research. I would like to thank all the masons, carpenters, painters and craftsmen who really are a connection between past and present, those who shared their experience with me, but also those who I did not have the chance to meet; I feel most thankful for all of their support. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Sonam Dunbang, to his son Stanzin and to all his relatives for hosting me like a member of their family and helping me while I was in Ladakh for the first time. Likewise I am also most grateful to the Srangstotpa family that very kindly hosted me during my second stay, making me feel at home in their house. I would like to thank all the staff at the Ladakh Arts and Media Organization (LAMO), doctor Sonam Wangchok and his colleagues at Himalayan Cultural Heritage Foundation (HCHF) and all my guides and translators that have been with me around Ladakh. A special thank goes to Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa for being an exceptional man and guide. I want to thank my friend Namgyal Angmo for her help with my research that continued even out of Ladakh and for inspiring me with her positive attitude all the time. I am grateful to all the members of The Flowering Dharma and Confluence for their friendship and support during my

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

second stay. Their presence and positivity was very important. Together with them I would like to thank the Rakupa family for having trusted them to preserve and reuse their old house that I had the chance to survey and study.

I also owe a lot to all the friends and colleagues I was able to work with while in and out of Ladakh. I would very much like to thank Quentin Devers for his professionalism and friendship, and for having showed me, through his love for this land, very interesting sites. I want to thank Tariq Wani for his courage in starting a project against the common practice, and for trusting my presence as a collaborator on his building site. With him I am thankful to Debasish Borah and Hélène Thébault for their friendship and for sharing their experience with me. I also want to thank the members of Roots Ladakh, Muzammil Munshi in particular for showing like Tariq much interest and devotion towards their land. I owe much to Rebecca Norman for her help and technical support for the long and interesting revision of the Ladakhi vocabulary, which I consider of great importance for this research. I want to thank Chiara Bellini for her precious help, patience and professional commitment until the very end. I want to thank the Indus University and its staff, professor Bhanupratap Sharma, INTACH and all the students who took part in the workshop of 2015. I want to thank Bill Brunner, Paul Mirmont and all members of Studio Ladakh who were always a source of new ideas during my stay. I would like to thank professors Andrea Rieger Jandl, Bettina Zeistler, Mauro Bertagnin, Vladimiro Pelliciardi, and Ugo Tonietti for their support. I would like to thank Chiara Carlson for the English revision of dissertation. I am really grateful to the ACHI Association, all of its members and friends for their help and their constant work in Ladakh. I want to thank the International Association for Ladakh Studies (IALS), not only the scholars, but also all the other people involved in encouraging the understanding of Ladakh and its people.

I want to thank the Tibet Heritage Fund (THF) and its staff for their long time dedication to the cause of vernacular architecture in Ladakh and the Himalayas. I dedicate this work to all of those on a path of research, and to the Ladakhis of the past, present and future generations.

note to the text

The work is mostly based on the Master thesis: A Fading Legacy / Ladakh’s Vernacular Architecture, defended in February 2016 at the University of Florence. The original content has been revised and integrated for the preparation of this book. The drawings were made anew and a more extended corpus of pictures, based on a second field-work in Ladakh, has been taken into account for this edition.

The introductory part of the text regarding environment, culture, history, and villages has been largely reduced but also integrated with new material, since most of its contents were only necessary for the background study of the dissertation. The core of the work regarding the house form and the house construction technology maintained its original format but got revised and extended. The Ladakhi technical vocabulary underwent a total correction mainly with the help of Rebecca Norman.

Ladakhi terms are written in italic type, except for people and places’ names, and they are firstly reported according to the phonetics. Quotations or words extracted from other works have been reported in their original form, except for those regarding architecture in particular which were further revised.

Particular terms, especially those related to architecture, presented for the first time in the work are transliterated between parenthesis after the phonetic version. These terms have been transliterated according to the system of Turrel W. Wylie (1959). For example the word ‘offering room’: chhotkhang, is the phonetic version which is transliterated between parenthesis as (mchod-khang). The transliterated version of some words could not be ascertained. For these terms a question mark is put between parenthesis after the word: (?). Since I am not a language expert, either for its spoken or written form, I could not provide the transliteration and standard phonetic form of every word. Nevertheless, much care was taken in the revised version of the work to try to research on each word of the architectural vocabulary.

Technical vocabulary is a difficult matter even for scholars, as it is rarely used in everyday language.

For the revision I was mainly relying on the collaboration with Rebecca Norman, who has been working on a vocabulary of the Ladakhi language for many years. To complement this work on the Ladakhi language ‘A Tibetan Dictionary’ by H. A. Jäschke was used to compare words with the wider Tibetan geo-cultural context.

All pictures and drawings by the author.

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

introduction

During my training at the University of Florence, the city environment was a fundamental element in any design process, and its past and history, a fundamental subject of confrontation for architects. The relationship between past and present is a critical issue for a fast-changing society and its future, especially when architectural heritage plays an important role in the local identity of a place. Today, at a global level, this is a challenge for both designers and communities. The construction principles interpreted and learned through the environment, the culture, the history of a place are essential elements in any new designs. In particular when studying vernacular architecture, it is more than the study of buildings for themselves. The house has to be related to the wider natural and built environment, to the socio-cultural aspects of the place and its past and present cross-cultural contacts. As it is found in the Cambridge Dictionary of English, the term vernacular refers to architecture, meaning a local style in which ordinary houses are built. The concept might as well be extended to include constructions that are not only dwellings, but all of those that are of the people. Vernacular buildings depend on available resources, and are customarily owned or community built1.

In a place like Ladakh, texts and books are not enough when it comes to learning about the past, and oral knowledge becomes of the utmost importance. The intangible aspects such as the knowledge passed on from generation to generation of masons and carpenters and the evolution of the shape of the house according to life-style, are precious elements of the cultural heritage. The knowledge that allows vernacular buildings to be conceived, made and maintained has to be preserved as an integral part of the cultures that generated it. Therefore, the intangible heritage should be considered as the larger framework within which tangible heritage takes on shape and meaning2.

When considering any place, its society and culture are important aspects of the identity preservation. Not considering these aspects would mean forgetting the basics of material culture: the ‘spirit of a place’3. The contemporary context of studies argues that the vernacular should not be regarded as an architectural category consisting of static buildings that need to be carefully safeguarded, but as a concept which identifies dynamic building traditions that continuously evolve while remaining distinctive

M. Vellinga, P. Oliver, A. Bridge, Atlas of Vernacular Architecture of the World, Oxon 2007, p. XIII. M. Bouchenaki, The Interdependency of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage, ICOMOS 14th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium (Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, 27-31 October 2003), 2003, p. 2.

3 ICOMOS, QueĚ bec Declaration on the Preservation of the Spirit of a Place, October 4th 2008.

1 2

previous page Igu fields

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

to a specific place. If a great extent of the vernacular heritage can be considered fleeting for its need of constant maintenance and replacement this can also be seen for its positive sustainable features. Vernacular architecture4: Normally presents a good climate adaptation and provides good thermal comfort due to the choice of natural materials and bio-climatic features adapted to the environment. Besides, it is a cost effective architecture, both in economic and social terms, self-sufficient as regards natural and knowledge resources and with a low environmental impact, and therefore, with a sustainable input.

Sustainability is an issue that has been gaining more and more attention in the architectural debates of the last decades. Sustainability, in its wider sense, is strongly related to the future, but this does not imply neglecting of the past. Knowledge gained through experience is a key element in the study of architecture. The intangible heritage, at the base of vernacular architecture, is an essential ground for any present and future design to be implemented. Apart from a specific place and cultural group, vernacular architecture is made for a given time5. Vernacular architecture can be seen as the result of a balancing process in which physical, environmental, cultural and formal factors are constantly related the one to the others through time. A slowly evolved practice and a long established tradition shaped both material and immaterial aspects of past architecture. For this reason, it is important to define the term ‘traditional’ when it is applied to buildings. Noble’s definition of ‘traditional’ in architecture is used here to explain how this concept is intended in this work. Traditional6: Refers both to procedures and material objects which have become accepted over long time as a norm in a society, and whose elements are passed on from generation to generation, usually orally, or more rarely by documents that have codified orally transmitted knowledge, instructions, and procedures. This is not to imply that traditional processes and objects do not change over time. They often do, but usually slowly enough that their provenance is clearly seen or easily established, and society is not upset or overturned by these modifications. Though change is a constant in any society, it is the rate at which a society is forced to absorb the new that determines whether it can retain its integrity.

Traditions can be seen as creative actions through which people, as active agents, interpret past knowledge and experiences to face the challenges and demands of the present; ideas prevalent in the contemporary fields of anthropology, cultural geography, history and archaeology studies which have all stressed the dynamic and processual nature of tradition7. Ladakh, a region among the highest mountains in the world, is an area in which past, present and future are fundamental aspects in constant relationship especially today, when a need for ‘identity’ is sought within the community. The wider Himalayan region has been already the focus of some important Italian scholars such as Giuseppe Tucci and 4 Lessons Learned and VerSus Outcomes, in M. Correia., L. Di Pasquale, S. Mecca (eds.), Versus: Heritage for Tomorrow / Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable Future, Firenze 2014, p. 17.

5 H. Guillaud, Defining Vernacular Architecture, in M. Correia., L. Di Pasquale, S. Mecca (eds.), Versus: Heritage for Tomorrow. Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable Future, Firenze 2014, p. 33.

6 A.G. Noble, Vernacular Buildings. A Global Survey, London 2014, pp. 1-2.

7 M. Vellinga, I. Asquith, Introduction, in M. Vellinga, I. Asquith (eds.), Vernacular Architecture in the Twenty-First Century Theory. Education and Practice, Oxon 2006, pp. 6-7.

introduction

Valerio Sestini. These eminent scholars have fostered the Italian interest in these high regions. Moreover, earth, a key component of Ladakhi buildings, is an important material to be considered when it comes to the study of vernacular architecture and sustainability, as it is one of the oldest materials employed even in Europe. Earth is only recently recognized in the European context as constitutive part of the built environment and landscape.

In Ladakh, the range of buildings that can be studied with the support of locals is rapidly decreasing.

The people’s life-style and culture have undergone rapid changes in the last century. The chance to investigate the buildings on site, and to experience how people are living in them, is priceless. For this reason the importance of conducting field work in the region should be stressed. The significance of an analysis made on site derives from the understanding that there are never fixed rules when it comes to building practice, since anything can be true in a general context, but not in specific circumstances.

What is still visible is that people have refined, in a severe natural environment, during many centuries, a unique architecture which acquires today great meaning. This architecture is the result of changing cultures through history up to the present day.

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

Environment, Culture and History

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

environment

The topography and the climate in Ladakh have remained almost unchanged for many centuries allowing the slow adaptation of humans and their dwellings. Houses are fundamental artefacts that provide locals with all the indoor space needed. Ladakhi people have been able to adapt to a severe environment thanks to their water management, agriculture and animal husbandry, together with their skilful house construction method. The environment has mutated due to climate change and the advent of industrial technology. It was only in the 20th century that roads could enter Ladakh’s valleys, even though the high passes still keep most of the areas difficult of access, in particular after the snow falls during the winter. For this reason imported construction materials appeared in Ladakh only in more recent times. Military contractors opened the first road in the country from Srinagar to Leh in 19661.

Positioning Ladakh During the course of its history, Ladakh (la-dvags) has been included within a number of political entities and these have had respectively different geographical boundaries2. Between the Great Himalayas and the Karakoram ranges are the valleys of what is nowadays the territory of Ladakh. These are the Indus, Zangskar, Nubra, Shyok and Suru valleys and the Rupshu plateau. Politically, this territory is today part of the Republic of India. Ladakh occupies an important geographical and strategic position, bordered on the east by Tibet, on the north by Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan), on the north-west by Baltistan (beyond the line of control and now in Pakistan), on the west by Kashmir and the Doda district and on the south by Himachal Pradesh and Punjab within India3. Its location was not only valuable as a commercial route and nodal point, but traders could also bring information from their respective regions, so that Leh Bazaar has been, in certain times of its history, an important source for government officials who wanted to monitor the on-going political situation in Central Asia4. Beyond mere subsistence, the economic life of Ladakh depended on merchant caravans, hence on commerce5.

H. Singh, Ecology and Development in High Altitude Ladakh: a Conflicting Paradigm, Proceedings of the 6th Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (Leh 1993), Recent Research on Ladakh 6, H. Osmaston, N. Tsering (eds.), Bristol 1997, p. 243.

2 J. Bray, Locating Ladakhi History, in J. Bray (ed.), Ladakhi Histories. Local and Regional Perspectives, Leiden/Boston 2005, p. 1.

3 A.G. Sheikh, Ladakh and its Neighbours: Past and Present, in J. Bray, N. Tsering Shakspo (eds.), Recent Research on Ladakh 2007, Leh 2007, p. 11.

4 Ibidem.

5 L. Petech, The Kingdom of Ladakh C. 950-1842 A.D., Roma 1977, p. 162.

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previous page Mulbekh towards West

•

Schematic map of Ladakh with the villages visited during the fieldword.

Mountain ranges delineate the principal tracts of Ladakh and its valleys. Mountains are always present in the perception of the landscape, rising above the streams that cut through them. Upper Ladakh is the westernmost tract of the wider Tibetan plateau, being the eastern part of Ladakh itself. The scenery is affected by the difference of heights in the valleys from east to west. Moving westward, the valleys deepen while the mountains remain at the same level. In these valleys the character of the country changes and it assumes the typical tracts of the Himalayas, where massive ridges alternate steeply carved valleys6. The mountain ranges, valleys and plateau are all part of two districts — Leh and Kargil — forming respectively two Autonomous Hill Councils. In this territory the architecture of houses present many similarities, even though differences have to be taken into account, as they are also a characteristic of this land. The differences can be given by local climate, by the topography of each settlement, and also by the variety of customs which sometimes change from place to place due to the varied building experience and practical needs of a precise moment in time.

pagina a fronte Titolo immagine descrizione immagine

6

M.S. Randhawa, Prem Nath, Farmers of India vol. 1. Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi 1956, p. 199.

environment

Climate and Human Activities The region of Ladakh falls in the rain shadow area of the Himalaya. Scarce precipitation (< 100mm. yr-1) characterized this land and therefore influenced the house form7. Ladakh is a high-altitude cold desert that can reach temperatures down to -30 to -40 °C during winter. On the other hand, summer temperatures can also rise up to 30-35 °C. Trees are also scarce in number since the limited water resources and precipitations do not allow an extensive growth. Poplars and willows are still currently the trees which are mainly used for timber production. It was only in the last fifty years that tree plantations have been more extensively implemented according to Indian national regulations. The long winters last more than six months and they mark an extreme climatic condition in one of the highest places to live on Earth. Building works can be accomplished only during the short summer months or autumn.

Time for construction, repair and restoration was only sought after having taken care of the agricultural production and cattle pasturing. Below-zero temperatures and snowfalls impede the building of mud

7 C.P. Kala, V. Mathur, Patterns of Plant Species Distribution in the Trans-Himalayan Region of Ladakh, “Journal of Vegetation Science”, XIII, Dec. 2002, n. 6, pp. 751-754.

•

The green village of Sabu below the barren ridges

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh â&#x20AC;˘ edoardo paolo ferrari

â&#x20AC;˘

Melting water from a glacier in a village in Zangskar

structures. Natural restrictions not only fostered peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity to overcome basic life needs but also made Ladakhis develop efficient yet simple dwelling solutions.

Natural constraints appear to dictate many aspects of life, in particular when communities could not rely on large amounts of imported items. The location of the settlements was selected so that agricultural production and the availability of grazing fields was possible. Ice Ages have been very influential, when the greatly enlarged glaciers deepened and widened valleys, which were then flooded with cultivable deposits: moraines, glacial outwash and periglacial fangs8. Villages are almost confined between such deposits which need to get a yearly water supply from melt water of glaciers. Rivers and their tributaries play an important role in determining the position of a settlement. Since the main rivers incise glacial, periglacial and fluvial deposits, they cannot be used as a water source without needing major engineering works; tributaries usually provide most supplies for the villages9. Agriculture has been, together with animal husbandry, the main form of activity that guaranteed subsistence to the locals. Ladakh has never had sufficient resources to maintain large armies and its topography prevented the creation 8 H. Osmaston, Environmental Determinism and Economic Possibilism in Ladakh, Proceedings of the 3rd Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (Herrnhut, 9-13 March 1987), L. Icke-Schwalbe, G. Meier (eds.), Dresda 1990, pp.

141-150.

9 Ivi, p. 143.

environment

of complex political infrastructures. Nevertheless people produced enough resources to support an extensive monastic community, while financing at the same time local and long distance trade10.

Agriculture was highly specialized in Ladakh, and consisted mainly of barley, but because of the strong military presence since the last century and the advent of tourism, major changes occurred11. The country became a cash economy and to a large extent it became dependent on imported food and manufactures. Environmental hazards rose after the introduction of chemical fertilizers, as opposed to the use of night soil and animal dung as manure. Agricultural practice in Ladakh was supported by efficient use of local resources12. Although Ladakh seems an unfavourable land, it is to a certain extent favourable for the cultivation of cereals. The soil needs to be reclaimed from the barren and rocky mountains and manure is also necessary even if it is common to cultivate for a few years without using it at the very beginning. Even if agriculture is still the most important activity in some villages, many Ladakhis are now looking for governmental jobs, since they guarantee a safe income. People often shift from villages to other cities, or leave for places providing higher education in other parts of India13.

Besides agriculture, animal husbandry was necessary not only for nomads but also for settled communities. The animal best adapted to the cold climate was the yak, still considered one of the most valuable creatures. Animals provided both work and food. The production of dairy, wool and meat are, along with dung-fuel and manure, vital products for the region. Generally dairy products, meat and wool were the trading goods that nomads exchanged in the agricultural centres. Nomads and villagers have always had close inter-relationships even if they had different life-styles. The outcome of their activities was their reciprocal exchange aiming at the subsistence of both communities. Such a system was regulated by seasons and a strong inter-connection was created between humans, animals, and natural products.

Availability of Materials Earth, stone and wood are the essential constituents of Ladakhi houses. The environment offers plenty of the first two items, though timber is rare especially at high altitudes. This very restricted list explains how very few materials were exploited for building not just houses but also sacred buildings, defensive walls, fortresses and even royal palaces. Earth and stone are present everywhere, even if in different forms and quality. What is even more difficult in this environment is the transformation of raw materials into other products. For example, it used to be difficult to have enough fuel for firing clay or melting metal in ovens in large quantities. This limited the use of earth to its dry form and metal was almost totally absent from construction works. Even glass had never been used until the 20th century by comBray, Locating… cit., p. 3.

Singh, Ecology…cit., p. 239.

12 V. Pelliciardi, L. Varvaro, F. M. Pulselli, Emergy Evaluation of a Traditional Farming System. Case Study: Leh District (Ladakh — Indian Trans-Himalaya), “European Journal of Sustainable Development”, III, n. 4, 2014, pp. 1-16.

13 J. Rizvi, Ladakh Croassroad of High Asia, New Delhi 20123, p. 132.

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mon people, as it was only the privilege of royalty. Another limit was the lack of construction tools and machines. Almost all the work related to architecture was carried out by hand from the sourcing of materials to their implementation on site.

Earth is found throughout the region and expert masons could tell the soil properties simply by touching it. This skill is necessary to source the proper soil, or to mix different earth types to obtain the needed mixture. Earth is the cheapest of materials but its fruitful employment requires experience. The only way to use it is by mixing it with water and letting it dry during the summer months. Burned bricks had never been used in Ladakh, as it was possible to use ovens to fire clay only for small sacred statues, as these are a present-day introduction. In fact no houses are commonly made out of burned bricks.

There are two main construction methods employed in the region: sun-dried mud bricks and rammed earth. The available earth determines whether it can be employed for one or the other technique, mainly according to its clay, sand and silt content.

Stone is employed mainly as it is found. It is difficult to dress stone because of the lack of tools, especially in the past. It was common that a village had only a single hammer for the whole community. Stone is sourced from mountains, or more easily taken near to a watercourse, and it is selected according to shape. If compared to earth, there is less practical knowledge of its intrinsic qualities. Another issue regarding stone is its weight. Even if trucks allow easier transportation, stone is always more expensive than earth. Houses completely built out of stone are not built everywhere in Ladakh, but only where stone does not need to be carried for long distances.

Wood is the most precious construction material and its use is limited to just a few parts of the house.

Its tensile strength is needed for horizontal structures. Wood is also employed for windows and door frames and for few pieces of furniture. Willow and poplar are the two kinds of timber trees found in Ladakh. Poplar and willow are grown in the irrigated oases around the villages but the recent building boom relied on imported timber from Kashmir brought in by trucks14. Juniper is very rare today and although traces of its usage are still found in old temples, this wood is now not being employed. Willow branches are better gathered when they have no buds or leaves. People in Leh look for willow mainly in April and nowadays the majority of them buy it instead of growing trees in their own gardens. When wood is needed for a new building it might also get recycled from abandoned or ruined buildings.

Wood is often recycled from abandoned constructions and stored for new houses. The dimension of timber elements that could be employed was also restricted by the way they were transported before the introduction of roads and vehicles. A horse or a yak could carry trunks not longer than 2 m. For longer elements it was necessary for people to hand-carry them. Except for religious buildings or wealthier families such as the royal family, it was not possible to use wood in great quantities.

J. Harrison, House and Fortress: Traditional Building in Buddhist Ladakh, in M. Ahmed., C. Harris (eds.), Ladakh. Culture at the Croassroad, Mumbai 2005, p. 26.

14

environment

New materials have been introduced to a large extent during the last century, with a peak in the last three to four decades. These materials are those which were not directly available or made on site such as glass, cement and steel. Today large amounts of imported wood have only become a recent possibility. The construction of tourist facilities, army camps but also local houses, has fostered the import of large amounts of construction products. However, this study does not aim at evaluating the positive or negative effects of the introduction of new materials in Ladakh. It seems that many young Ladakhis no longer wish to work in building construction, and so the future of traditional building crafts is precarious.

â&#x20AC;˘

The village of Skyurbuchen from the monastery

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culture and society

People, Language and Religion The people of Ladakh are heterogeneous as far as their origins, cultural influences and varied identities are concerned. On the ethnicity of the people that inhabited the land before the 10th century a clear answer is still to be found. The question of the earlier layer of inhabitants revolves mainly around two names: the ‘Dards’ and the ‘Mons’. However, present-day Ladakhis are a mixed race composed of pre-Tibetan and Tibetan people that later migrated to this land. Today many people from mainland India, as well as from other neighbouring regions, have moved to Ladakh especially for work during the summer months. In the past foreign merchants settled in Ladakh for business purposes in the main trading centres like Leh. The Moravian mission was founded in the 19th century, and along with it a small Christian community developed. The local language is a Tibetan idiom spoken in many mutually intelligible dialectal variants in the different parts of the region1. No written form of the language existed and most of the historical records from the period of the kingdom were written in classical Tibetan. Today Hindi, Urdu and English are taught in schools, allowing a new series of cultural influences to be accessed by the Ladakhis. Important contributions have been given to the study of the Ladakhi language and dialects, by local and foreign scholars in recent years.

Concerning religion, there are a number of faiths present in Ladakh today. Buddhism used to be the predominant faith during the period of the kingdom, but nowadays the population is almost equally made up of Buddhist and Muslims. A small number of Christians are present since the 19th century and recently Hindus and Sikhs moved to Ladakh from mainland India, mainly to work during the summer period, or those who have been assigned by the armies. The majority of Buddhist population is in the Leh district, while Kargil is mostly Muslim. There are different Buddhist sects in Ladakh, which have played important and varied roles during the course of the history of the Kingdom. Muslims are both Shia and Sunni, with a majority of Shia in the Kargil area. In general, there used to be no conflicts between the two major groups and it is only in the 20th century that, mainly for political reasons, tension has been growing. Interfaith marriages used to be common in the past.

1 C. Namgyal Ltebapa, Ladakhi language, Proceedings of the 6th Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (Leh 1993), Recent Research on Ladakh 6, H. Osmaston, N. Tsering (eds.), Bristol 1997, p. 351.

previous page A woman about to roast barley on her veranda

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Three stupas (mchod-rten) representing the protectors of the three families (rigs-gsum-mgon-po) on the hilltop of Pipiting

Social Organization As for all communities living in extreme conditions, cooperation was necessary because of the limits imposed by the environment. Each household member carried out the main farming activities and house duties, but in general the community worked as a whole. Many practices were performed collectively, especially in small villages. Working activities are often done in groups even from different families and people cooperate for agricultural works as well as for the construction of houses. Everyone can help for any activity, and the moments spent working are also a way for the community to share food, drinks and chat with each other. Other specialised working activities were shared between the villagers according to shifts. The head of the village: goba (‘go-ba), was elected from every household according to a rotation, so as to include everyone.

Many items used to be made from scratch, such as clothes. Small communities required single members to be multi-skilled in order to remain self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency used to be of the utmost importance for villagers. Only nowadays many Ladakhis are seeing self-sufficiency as a sign of underdevelopment because it is thought to be limiting access to specialised jobs. Apart from a few exceptions, there were not many specialised activities carried out only by a single person. Certain villages had local doctors: amchhi (am-chi), astrologers: onpo (dbon-po), musicians: mon, beda (mon, ‘be-da) and black-

culture and society

smiths: gara (mgar-ba). Everyone had to take care of household duties, even for those with a more specialised job. Figures like masons, rtsikspon (rtsig-dpon) and carpenters shingkhan (shing-mkhan), worked only when their skills were needed. A single person could be at the same time amchhi, onpo, rtsikspon and shingkhan while being in charge of his household. Regarding specialisations, today many young Ladakhis do not consider the profession of mason as a good full-time job. This is increasing the number of non-Ladakhi masons in the region, which is also threatening the continuity of the local oral tradition. Today, the tourist market in particular offers more advantageous job opportunities. The introduction of a monetary system has brought many to seek for governmental jobs (in a district office or in the army) while agrarian life-style, much influenced by seasons, is not the only option anymore.

The household used to be a static unit. The household property, which included both house and land, was usually not split among relatives. Ladakhâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s society was strongly patrilineal and the household remained undivided generation after generation under the guidance of the elder son, who succeeded the father as the head of the family. The household is ideally immutable and permanent. Unaltered properties allowed households and villages to control their size, so that food production was not overburdened, keeping the community stable. Polyandry was widely practiced among Buddhists and later banned during the 20th century. Fraternal polyandry allowed brothers who shared the same father to share a wife, even if only the elder son was the owner of the household and the father for any of the wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s children. In case of a quarrel, if the family bond among the extended family was broken, some of the younger brothers could move from the household, losing their privileges and becoming independent. Younger brothers could be assigned to monasteries to become monks even in their childhood. Nowadays, the separation of main houses is more common because in many cases there is no longer the need to maintain a single property. People can easily move and look for new job opportunities in other places, even outside Ladakh. Village life today is often not based on agriculture or pastoralism, while tourism has become a major source of income. Villages are not closed systems anymore, with static households and limited production potential because roads and faster connections facilitate peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobility and commerce. The communities could rapidly increase in size in the last decades.

A new economy allowed villagers to choose, not being forcibly linked to an older subsistence structure.

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historical background

It important to underline again that the territory nowadays considered Ladakh has changed much during the centuries. The history of the land constituting present-day Ladakh has always been interwoven with that of the surrounding regions, not least because of its strategic position. Ongoing studies are revealing new evidence on the regional history and prehistory, reconsidering historical sources, while taking into account new discoveries and archaeological sites. These studies have started clarifying many of the historical uncertainties of these territories, often questioning what has been considered a unique land, which in the past had been not only under the control of different forces at different moments in time, but also inhabited by varied cultural groups and ethnicities. In this chapter we will only consider some of the history since it is beyond the scope of the book to examine in detail a past of which many parts have yet to be fully understood.

Despite its position amidst the high ranges of the Himalayas, beyond high mountain passes, the territory today known as Ladakh has been inhabited for thousands of years. If one overcomes the limits of current borders, it is possible to imagine how this land was at the centre of a network linking many regions from Central Asia to mainland India and farther in other directions. For centuries, borders were loose and uncertain and the land was not subject to the limits of lines traced on maps. When permanent settlements were established, after agriculture and life had been adapted to this high altitude environment, short as well as long distance trade fostered the exchange of goods. However, along with material products, cultures and traditions met at the slow pace of caravans’ journeys. If one can attempt to analyse the history of the territories which, wholly or partly, make up today’s Ladakh through the inscriptions, text, forts, temples and ruins, it is harder to understand the history of simple houses. Residential architecture is by its nature constantly adapted, changed, dismantled or rapidly eroded by weather, making the understanding of its history challenging. This history made of slowly evolving patterns which are diluted over centuries, has partly survived in the remnant layers of older constructions and — often unconsciously — in the practice and gestures of a few masons, whose knowledge is partly rooted in a recent, and at the same time, ancient past.

previous page Slits on the main façade of the Leh palace

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high altitude houses. vernacular architecture of ladakh • edoardo paolo ferrari

Early Times Prehistoric sites discovered in certain areas of the region show traces of what seem to have been transhumance camps. This demonstrates how pastoral communities and hunters were already present in these areas for possibly millennia. Important links with Central Asia and mainland India are found in protohistoric times mainly through the study of petroglyphs and epigraphs. The lack of clear data before the 10th century obstructs the understanding of the exact political entities governing Ladakh in early times and their presence in the territory. One of the difficulties comes from the several names attributed by different sources, to describe at least part of today’s Ladakh. Little is known of the history of Ladakh prior to the 10th century, of its political organization and whether the political entities present on the territory were indigenous or foreign. During the second half of the first millennium CE, Tibetan, Chinese, Turk and Arab forces disputed the control of Central Asia. It is likely that on many occasions, the territories of present-day Ladakh served as a path, first for the conquest and then for the retreat of enemy armies, during a period of conflicts involving the neighbouring regions, from the 7th to the 9th centuries1. The power clash in Central Asia ended at the beginning of the 9th century and many areas fell under the Arabs and Uighurs, while Western Tibet and areas of today’s Ladakh broke into small principalities2. These principalities, or small structured regions, have characterised the way the power was manifest in this land for many centuries. It is important that, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, Kashmir was a major cultural source for Ladakh and certainly Buddhism penetrated the country first from the Kashmiri side3.

From the First Dynasty to the Early Contacts with the West It was only with the fall of the Tibetan empire that this region emerges as a distinct political entity. Nevertheless, historical sources show many uncertainties regarding the period of the first dynasty, and probably rulers were coming from various tribes, lands and communities. Ladakh at this time was a fragmented territory. After the assassination of the last Tibetan king Langdarma (842 CE), internal conflicts brought Tibetan monarchy to an end. The internal wars in Tibet forced the chief of those who considered themselves the direct descendants of the royal dynasty to move into new territories4. Sources diverge on the take over of Ladakh. According to Petech the chief Kylde Nyimagon (sKyd-lde Nyima-mgon) was able to establish his authority over mNga’-ris-skor-grum, an area that, in its original sense, included part of present day Ladakh, as well as Guge and Purang5. After the death of Kylde Nyimagon in 950 CE, his dominions were divided between his three sons; the descendants claimed their political and religious legitimacy because they belonged to the Tibetan monarchy lineage of the YarSheikh, Ladakh… cit., pp. 11-12.

Ivi, p. 12.

3 Ibidem.

4 H. Richardson, D.L. Snellgrove, A Cultural History of Tibet, Boston & London 1986.

5 Bray, Locating… cit., p. 16.

1 2

historical background

lung dynasty6. After the collapse of the Tibetan monarchy, the new rulers of mNga’-ris-skor-grum took up the task of their predecessors as the patrons of Buddhist religious houses7. The importance of this sponsorship lays in the fact that trained scholars and artisans were sent to India to study both the fundamental concepts and the currents of the Buddhist Doctrine. Along with texts and philosophical concepts, architectural principles and rituals were then imported by the returning scholars8. In addition, artisans mainly from Kashmir accompanied them. The main religious influences entered these territories from India during the first centuries of the kingdom, at least while the territories bordering today’s Ladakh on the west were under the Buddhist domain. The rulers of mNga’-ris-skor-grum played a major historical role as patrons of the Second Diffusion of Buddhism which took place all over Tibet9. In this context the Great Translator Rinchen Sanpo (Rin-chen-bzan-po) was a major figure, whose name is still mentioned today in the legends of many villages. In addition to being a great translator of Buddhist texts, he also built many temples and stupas in Western and Indian Tibet. His figure cannot be disassociated from that great building activity that took place around 1000 CE in these regions, though not all the buildings attributed to him were in fact the result of his direct work10. Nevertheless, a great number of constructions are still related to his figure, but the only one firmly attributable to him is Nyar-ma11. Buddhism was by far the strongest religious influence at that time, but Ladakh was already coming into more peaceful contacts with the Islamic world and the confrontations with the Muslims were not only military (king Nyimagon chose a Persian or an Arab woman to be one of his four wives)12.

Despite the confusion in the sources, and the gaps in the dynastic lines and the many raids that afflicted this land, Ladakh was not a chaotic area as Buddhism thrived there through the intensive construction of many religious buildings13.

Cultural influences from Persia and western Central Asia are likely to have reached Ladakh already under Hindu rulers, when Buddhism and Hinduism peacefully existed side by side in Kashmir14. Ladakh has gathered, within its small cultural area, a remarkable collection of different art styles, though it is a very complicated matter when it comes to ascertain their origins15. Starting from the early centuries CE, a complex process of cultural and artistic exchange was typical of all the countries connected by trade routes from China through Central Asia to Persia. The cult objects, the decorative woodwork and all the elaborate paintings that adorned the temples in Ladakh had to be imported16. From the 13th Ivi, p. 6.

D.L. Snellgrove, T. Skorupski, The Cultural Heritage of Ladakh Vol. 1, Warminster 1979, p. 5.

8 Ibidem.

9 Bray J., Locating… cit., p. 8.

10 G. Tucci, Rin-chen-bzan-po and the Renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet around the Millenium, New Delhi 1988, p. 10.

11 Snellgrove, Skorupski, The Cultura… cit., p. 15.

12 Bray, Locating… cit., p. 9.

13 Q. Devers, Les Fortifications du Ladakh, De l’âge du Bronze à la Perte d’Independance (1683-1684 d.n.è), PhD, p. 63.

14 Snellgrove, Skorupski, The Cultura… cit., p. 8.

15 Ivi, p. 15.

16 Ibidem.

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The Leh Palace above the old town (left) and the fort dominating from the mountaintop (right)

century the Buddhists in Ladakh increasingly looked to Tibet as the religion was disappearing from India. The political triumph of Islam in Kashmir in the 14th century also brought the Buddhist and Hindu art to an end in this region.

From the 16th century begins the period of a new dynasty, whose name was going to survive until the end of the kingdom: the Namgyal (rnam-rgyal) dynasty. With the Namgyal dynasty the Kingdom of Ladakh reached its maximum expansion, especially under the king Senge Namgyal (Sen-ge-rnam-rgyal) (r. 1616-1642), joining other areas such as Nubra and Zangskar to central Ladakh. This dynasty succeeded in creating an unprecedented unification of upper and lower Ladakh. From this time on, only Tibetan names are mentioned in the chronicles. It was probably during Senge Namgyal’s father’s reign, Jamyang Namgyal (‘Jam-dbyans-rnam-rgyal), that a European visited Ladakh for the first time, as a proof that the trades through Central Asia were very lively17. This man was a Portuguese merchant called Diogo d’Almeida. At the end of the 16th century, when Kashmir became part of the Moghul empire, the Moghul dress-style was adopted by the kings of Ladakh. Persian and Moghul influences continued to have an impact on Ladakh resulted even if the country could no longer turn to Kashmir to enrich its Buddhist tradition. Ladakh’s increasing political contacts with its Muslim neighbours marked a growing cultural influence and an increase in the Muslim population within the kingdom itself18. In the 17th century, the king Senge Namgyal built the Palace of Leh. This imposing construction is a remarkable proof of the expertise in stone, mud and woodwork construction in the Himalayas at that time. The palace, also known as Lechen Palkar (Gle-den dpal-mkhar), is a nine level fabric with battered walls19. The master mason in charge of its construction was a Balti Muslim, both carpenter Petech, The Kingdom… cit., pp. 36-37.

Bray, Locating… cit., p. 13.

19 C. Jest, J. Sanday, The Palace of Leh in Ladakh: An Example of Himalayan Architecture in Need of Preservation, “Mountain Research and Development, III, Feb. 1983, n. 1, p. 2.

17 18

and mason, called Chandar Ali Singge20. From the 16th century Ladakh turned increasingly eastwards towards Tibet, receiving those Tibetan Buddhist traditions that had been developing independently within Tibet. During the 17th and 18th centuries other encounters with the West took place. In 1624 the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco de Azevedo established a mission in western Tibet and travelled to Ladakh21. Padre Ippolito Desideri, another Jesuit, together with the friar Manoel Freyre, entered Ladakh in 1715, but later left to continue their journey to Lhasa22.

From the Loss of Independence to the Annexation to India The Tibet-Ladakh-Kashmir war was going to mark the end of the independent reign of Ladakh by the last quarter of the 17th century. The peace negotiated in Tignmosgang resulted in a treaty which had serious consequences for Ladakh, since from that moment Kashmir was supposed to be the official authority in this territory. Moreover, from that time Ladakh was supposed to send regular tribute to Kashmir and Tibet. The chiefs of Ladakh need no longer foster their expansionist ambitions and the land became gradually enfeebled until the Dogra conquest. In particular the first half of the 19th century is a period of unrest, which gives evidence of the weakness of the Ladakhi state. In 1819 the expanding Sikh state of Ranjit Singh conquered Kashmir and Ladakh entered into the political orbit of the Sikh kingdom23. After the defeat, the monarchy was abolished and the aristocracy lost its powers while the country was merged under the dominion of Gulab Singh who, in 1846, became the Maharaja of Kashmir under British protection24. In the 19th century there is also the first continuous encounter between A.G. Sheikh, Islamic Architecture in Ladakh, in M. Ahmed., C. Harris (eds.), Ladakh. Culture at the Croassroad, Mumbai 2005, pp. 41.

21 Bray, Locatingâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 15.

22 Petech, The Kingdomâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 91.

23 Ivi, p. 130.

24 Ivi, p. 151.

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the West and Ladakh25. After Ladakh was incorporated into the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir, its history has been irrevocably interwoven with India. The main themes of the period are a high degree of cultural continuity on a village level and continuity of religious influence from Tibet, while the region was gradually integrated into the wider Indian and international economy26. In 1947 Ladakh became part of independent India. A crucial event happened in the following decade: the important age-old trade relations between Ladakh and Central Asia ended after the People’s Republic of China brought Tibet and Xinjiang under its control27. Moreover, since India became independent, a period of accelerating social change, complicated by political uncertainties on local, national and international levels, became more and more evident, raising new questions about Ladakhi identity and status28.

A Brief Historiography of Houses The first detailed descriptions of Ladakhi houses date back to the early 19th century. In this period Westerners began to write accounts of Ladakh, concerning different aspects of the land, life and culture as well as their personal journey diaries in the region. In these early works, the house is merely depicted in its basic form, since vernacular architecture was not the main subject treated. It is also clear that the dwellings were seen as very simple constructions not worth a detailed study. In the 19th and 20th centuries other interests concerned those who explored, studied, and lived in Ladakh, and who were often motivated by their countries’ political interests. In spite of the little consideration given to the houses these works are important because the vernacular type is here delineated in its essential features. The first western account describing Ladakhi houses is the one by William Moorcroft and George Trebeck after their travels in 1821-22, the very first explorers of Ladakh before the Dogra conquest. William Moorcroft, a veterinarian, and his companion George Trebeck, spent nearly two years in and around the region. In their book are described the houses of what is today defined as the Leh Old Town, below the lofty Leh Palace29: They vary from one to two or three stories in height and some are loftier. The walls are in few instances wholly, or in part of stone, but in general they are built with large unburned bricks: they are whitened outside with lime, but remain of the original colour inside. They are usually furnished with light wooden balconies; the roofs are flat, and formed of small trunks of poplar trees, above which a layer of willow shoots is laid, which is covered by a coating of straw, and that again by a bed of earth. In rainy weather this is a very insufficient defence, as the water soon softens the earth, and pours down into the apartment: the stairs are formed of rough stones. The rooms, though frequently of good size, are low, rarely above seven or eight feet; and the ceilings are made like the roof, of poplar beams, supporting slender willow sticks or laths, sometimes peeled and laid quite close together, and covered with earth. […] The most considerable building in Lé is the palace of the

Bray, Locating… cit., p. 15.

Ivi, p. 16.

27 Sheikh, Ladakh… cit., p. 19.

28 Bray, Locating… cit., p. 22.

29 W. Moorcroft, G. Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara Vol. 1, London 1841, pp. 316-318.

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historical background

Raja, which has a front of two hundred and fifty feet, and is of several stories in height, forming a conspicuous object on the approach of the city. This, as well as the houses in general, diminishes in extent as it rises, and the whole town has much the appearance of a cluster of houses of cards. The temples are built of the same materials as the houses, and pillars of timber, like those in private dwellings, support the beams, being little more, in fact, than the stems of the willow or poplar stripped of their bark and painted.

Alexander Cunningham of British East India Company visited Ladakh in 1846 and 1847. In these years he worked on the compilation of his remarkable work on Ladakh that was published in 1854 in London. His work constitutes the first general account on this land, a comprehensive collection of data of ‘encyclopaedic’ nature, still valuable today. He was than appointed archaeological surveyor of India, and later became the general director of the Archaeological Survey of India. In his work Cunningham also describes the domestic part of Leh Old Town. The full description is reported here30: The generality of the houses throughout Ladakh are so much alike that a description of one will serve for all.

The houses usually consist of two or three stories and sometimes four. The foundations and lower parts of the walls are built of stone, the upper walls of large sundried mud bricks, 20x10x6 inches. In the better houses some of the rooms are of considerable size, twenty-five feet long and eighteen broad; but they are always very low, the highest not exceeding seven and a half or eight feet. The roofs of these large rooms are always supported by plain wooden pillars. The roof is formed by poplar spars five to six inches in diameter, peeled white, and laid only one to one and a half feet apart. The beams are covered in with small straight pieces of poplar branches about one inch in diameter, peeled white, and placed touching each other. Generally they are laid straight across the beam; but sometimes at different angles, in the alternate intervals, so as to form a pattern like herring-bone. The whole is then covered with a layer of leaves and thick coat of well-beaten clay.

The floors are of earth, but the better sort are paved with small slit pebbles, about the size of turkey’s eggs, set in clay with the flat surface upwards. They form a clean, hard, smooth, and lasting floor. The principal room generally has a balcony towards either the south or the west, from ten to twenty feet in length, and usually about two feet and a half in width, where the family sits to enjoy the sun in the winter season. The doors are mere rough planks of wood, joined together by wooden tenons, and sometimes strengthened by cross bars fastened with wooden pins. Purdahs or wadded curtains are also used as an additional means of excluding the cold wind; but when the doors are shut, there is only a dim light admitted into these apartments through one or two loopholes, which are closed with small shutters at night. If supplied with glass windows and fireplaces, many of these houses would form very comfortable residences; but at present they must be wretched habitations for winter. The houses of the poorer classes are generally of two stories: the lower story being appropriated to their cattle. The roofs are much more coarsely made, and the rooms are small and very low, being sometimes under six feet in height.

To conclude this brief section on the historiography of domestic buildings, a short passage from the work of Frederic Drew is also included since it reveals some other aspects of interest. Drew was a geologist by training who worked for the maharaja of Kashmir from 1862 to 1872, and appointed governor of Ladakh at the end of his service. In his account are described houses and the Leh Palace, with some interesting comments on the latter. His notes begin by introducing the main materials employed for the construction of houses in Leh. The full description is quoted here31: A. Cunningham, Ladak, physical, statistical, and historical. With notices of the surrounding countries, London 1854, pp. 313314.

31 F. Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories. A geographical Account, London 1875, p. 249.

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The houses are built of sun-dried bricks or of stone. They are flat-roofed, of two or three stories, but these all very low. Except in the very poorest houses there is always a reception room kept neat and clean, the rest not having this character. When a visitor comes they carpet this room with felt, and do all they can to make him and his attendants comfortable. The houses are all whitewashed, the aspect of them — perhaps among groups of trees, or else standing out in relief from the sombre rock on which they may be built, rising one behind the other on the face of it — with their verandah-rooms or with balconies projecting, is often bright and pleasant. The house of people of higher ranks have an oratory for the practice of the Buddhist religious ceremonies. The palace at Leh is probably the finest building in the country, though some of the monasteries may approach it. This palace is curiously contrived. The arrangement of the rooms is very irregular; they are not in continuous stories, but are at all sorts of levels, connected by narrow and low passages. There are two or three large reception rooms, some of them with an opening to the sky in the centre, this plan allowing of a large fire burning in winter on the floor of the room. The roofs of these large rooms were supported by columns with the wide-extending head or capital which is so marked a feature in Indian architecture; the columns, and indeed most of the woodwork, were gaily coloured, and on the walls are painted sacred pictures.

Through these descriptions one can have a first glimpse of the appearance of houses during the 19th century, and the many features which persisted until the mid 20th century almost unchanged. Only contemporary studies opened Ladakh to a variety of in depth researches, which were possible in particular after Ladakh became open to foreigners and tourists in 1974. At the beginning of this period of new studies the focus was directed mainly to religious architecture. Starting from the 20th century, architecture, and especially the vernacular, is analysed not only by architects, but also by anthropologists and ethnologists, who have investigated the house focusing on its crucial relationships with culture and environment. Since then, scholars have been able to analyse in greater depth several fields that were marginally treated before, in a rapidly changing global scenario.

On the Traces of a House Form Semi-desert climate and high altitude offer humans limited resources for life, as well as for construction. Nevertheless, houses made of earth, stone and even a scarce amount of wood, date back to millennia of human construction practice. Even with limited resources people have been able to adapt to the conditions imposed by the environment. Apart from relying on locally available materials, people developed their houses also according to specific social and spiritual needs. In this barren highland, nature not only provides scarce assets for humans, but it is often seen as a constant threat. Settlements might be surrounded by rock, sand and nothing else for kilometres, and one would have to live in these valleys to feel what a human being experiences in a small community on the fringes of society. Therefore, the house safeguards people from the environment in all senses: physical, psychological and spiritual32. Battered walls, small windows and flat roofs emphasize the solid mass of houses, embodying their multiple protective functions. Houses not only protect humans, but animals, food and fuel, all indispensable elements for survival. In the house, animals live on the ground floor while people mainly occupy the first floor. Houses generally have from two to three floors and in some cases a third 32

R. Powell, Tibetan Houses in Ladakh, “Art and Archaeology Research Paper”, XII, London 1977, pp. 55.

previous page Stone house interiors

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floor hosts a veranda and a prayer room. The centre of the house, pivot of all main indoor activities, is the fireplace room. The house is a ‘comprehensive system’, which includes every aspect of life: from the practical to the spiritual ones. It is however important to keep in mind that the house form which can be analysed today in the region is the result of a long time process of refinement and evolution.

This process could have integrated different elements at various moments in time, according to the local or foreign traditions which had an impact on this land and its people, which are difficult to be reconstructed in a clear time frame. An attempt at the understanding of some of the main features of the houses is made here, starting form its formal aspects. In no sense is this intended to provide a history of the house form, but rather a first general idea of its main elements, not merely understood in the present context, but in a historical perspective.

A Step Back into Antiquity: Stone-Roofed Constructions Archaeological evidence from the study of Devers shows that in ancient times many constructions found upstream of the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers (upper Ladakh) were stone-roofed33.

In his research are presented among the oldest defensive buildings found in certain sites in Ladakh, which are covered by stone roofs, having thick walls and no windows. With fortifications are also to be found hermitages and other constructions likely to have a residential function, as well as a variety of religious buildings. These constructions are covered utilizing stone as a roofing material, through a varied use of the available stone elements. Many roofs present mixed techniques that were needed to obtain greater spans using short elements. A combination of corbelling elements, brackets used to support bridging stones, and slabs were used for this purpose. However, very small spans were obtained with the use of stone as a roofing material. Knowing about this technology, and some of its different modes of employment, allows us to have a wider idea of which construction techniques were used in ancient times, at least in upper Ladakh. Moreover the stone roofing could have been possibly used for building residential architecture in its earlier forms. As underlined by Devers the stone-roofed constructions do not form a homogenous corpus, as one can clearly distinguish different construction traditions, spatial conception and configuration, as well as differences in local environments. Devers suggests that Ladakh was not the territory of a single cultural group, but probably a territory inhabited by different cultural and ethnic groups as suggested in the evidence provided by these ancient structures.

If one moves eastwards towards Tibet, the discovery of other ancient sites proves important for the understanding of the modes of construction of residential architecture in other areas of the Himalayas.

In the extensive study Bellezza made in upper Tibet are presented a series of stone-roofed buildings, some of them having residential functions, which characterized the landscape of this high region, but that are also important for a comparative analysis in this work. The stone-roofed constructions of Tibet 33

Devers, Les Fortifications… cit.

historical background

are attested as the highest permanent residences in the world, located at an altitude up to 5500 m34. Regarding these construction the author states that35: The corbelled buildings of uppermost Tibet differ dramatically from Buddhist architecture in terms of their conception, design, construction and use. These massive windowless structures are set atop mountains or in other hard to reach locations, fully exposed to the elements and to the sky in one of the world’s toughest climates. The semi-subterranean aspect of many structures suggests a chthonic dimension in the ideology related to their establishment. Dark, easy to heat, with low ceilings and small rooms, Tibetan corbelled architecture is womb-like in nature, asymmetrical in plan, and heavily improvisational in execution. It intensively exploits the topographical character of local sites, incorporating in situ boulders and cliffs into walls.

Some of these constructions were built making use of much larger stone elements as compared to those found in upper Ladakh by Devers. In any case, the identification of this technology even in upper Tibet is important for comparison, notwithstanding the sole dimension or amount of the objects taken into account, or the distinct local environments. Devers notices the difference between the high Tibetan plateau and Ladakh, since the latter has retained a strong agricultural base and important population centres, and for these conditions, many areas in Ladakh could have been continuously inhabited for millennia while settlements of upper Tibet were left abandoned at a certain point. The continuous inhabitation of the sites in Ladakh is also a prime factor in the evolution and upgrading of constructions, chiefly the domestic ones. Older models which cannot be adapted are replaced by newer residential structures.

Even if the Tibetan residential structures are found in a different area of the Himalayas, there are striking common features between these constructions and the Ladakhi houses still found in villages. First all of, the improvisational execution marks the approach to house construction all over Ladakh. In a few cases, larger houses (those of the well-off) or successive additions are built so that at least the house façades look symmetrical, even though these attempts are never visible in the more simple dwellings.

In general the harmony of the elevations of a building is not created through the systematic use of symmetry, but rather through the balance of contrasting elements: small and deep windows cut into the large wall surfaces, and the juxtapositions of square volumes which form the fabric. Any form of design or exact drawing has only recently been introduced, as only a simple scheme on the ground used to be the reference for erecting the load bearing structure. In many villages even now, the construction of a house is done solely according to the experience and capacity of improvisation of each builder. What is important is to bear in mind which functions the house should serve and how many people it is to accommodate. The improvisational character, plus the frequent addition of new parts after the ‘first’ house has been built, make the dwellings visibly asymmetrical. The adaptation to the ground, in particular on slopes, emphasize the asymmetric nature of houses which must replicate the morphology of J.V. Bellezza, The ancient corbelled buildings of Upper Tibet. Architectural attributes, environmental factors and religious meaning in a unique type of archaeological monument, “Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture”, Architecture and Conservation, Tibet 2015, p. 4.

35 Ibidem.

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the site. On the elevations, the windows simply mirror a room’s function, and towards north and west, walls are bare, with no openings, for protection from the cold winds. Elevations show a very adaptive style, which is sometimes mediated by the use of fake windows, inserted to regularize the façade composition. Windows used to be few and small, as described for the Tibetan stone dwellings, so when entering an old house all the rooms are obscure even during the day, an aspect — that of the darkness — emphasized by the walls blackened by the soot deposits left by open fires. The womb-like nature of the residences of upper Tibet can still be witnessed in many Ladakhi houses which have the fireplace room often placed inside the core of the construction. Some rooms (mostly the winter fireplace room) might present a semi-subterranean location on the ground floor, between the stables, to be kept warmer. Doors, like windows, are also small, and together with the low ceilings, allow an easier heating of the inner spaces, but at the same time in Ladakh, doors are small enough to prevent trespass by certain spirits. Moreover, it has to be remembered that glass was not available in Ladakh until the last century.

Similar features shared by upper Tibetan stone dwellings and rural houses in Ladakh seem to suggest a common practical nature of the domestic typology above all. This is probably related to the necessary adaptation to the environment and management of the scarce resources and fuel. Architectural appearance was not the main concern, especially in archaic times, or today wherever resources are scarcer. However, even if this has to be demonstrated, the common features of these buildings might also reflect not only the mere adaptation to practical needs, but also embrace peculiar local beliefs. next page Chube house, Leh

Solid Volumes: The Formal Language of the Masonry In Ladakh constructions share the same structural technology. Differences can be found only in terms of sacredness, positioning, scale, and decorative motifs. In particular, the formal features of the masonry — and also the main timber components — denote a common ground among all buildings. The masonry, notwithstanding if made of stone or earth, develops in a series of wide surfaces articulated in different volumes which form the fabric, often adapting to the ground or slope on which it is raised. The walls of most of the buildings (including houses) used to be tapering, a feature which gives, especially to the higher constructions, a lift towards the sky, as if they resemble a mountain’s outline. The walls of a simple rural house have much in common with the larger masses of a fort or monastic complex. In the masonry all the solid nature of Ladakhi houses is expressed. The attributes of the masonry are generally considered derivative from Tibetan architecture. For this reason it is interesting to look back to the prototypes of Tibetan architecture when considering the defensive nature of houses. In early Tibet36: Extreme mobility, especially among the warring aristocracy, went hand in hand with the principle of basing one’s power firmly on an estate defended by a fortified castle. This period preceding the country’s unification, projected back into the legendary times, was characterized by ‘little kings’ or princelings who were not strong enough to confront the large countries in the four principal directions. ‘They fought amongst them-

36

R.A. Stein, Tibetan Civilisation, Stanford 1972, pp. 119-120.

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selves and they liked to kill’ and ‘there were strongholds on all the hills and all the steep rocks’. And so the first king to bring this anarchy to an end begins by building his family’s first castle, Yumbu-lagang, in Yarlung.

And indeed, every one knows the magnificent, daring stone buildings typical of Tibet palaces, castles, temples, and even private houses. Such technology is not the work of nomads. The prototypes of this architecture are reported in the Land of Fu and the Country of Women, in eastern Tibet, in the sixth century: nine storied houses and defence towers, some 75 to 90 feet in height. These towers, which are often octagonal are still characteristic of the Ch’iang and other districts in Kham, in the modern period: they are also known in Kongpo and Lhotrak where they have nine or ten stories and are sometimes octagonal, sometimes square, with very thick walls.

The Yumbu Lagang (Yum-bu bla-sgang), also known with a variety of other names such as Ombu Lagang (‘om-bu bla-sgang), Yum bu gla sgam or Um bu rdsangs mkhar in the chronicles of Ladakh, is considered the surviving most ancient dwelling with defensive function survived in Tibet37. It is said to have been built by a king to whose reign the first appearance of Buddhism in Tibet is traditionally dated. In its lower stone walls (presumably original) are visible the main characteristics of the masonry described above: solid mass, tapering walls, and small or no windows. Some of the roofs retain the original flat structure while a Chinese roof was added later on the tower and some of the window look like they were made bigger in later stages. It is worth keeping in mind this early example whenever approaching a rural house in a village, to think of the connections between houses and forts, embodied in their walls of stone and mud. Even if this ancient construction in Central Tibet cannot be fully considered a prototype for the buildings in the territories of Ladakh, which was probably subject to earlier and many other cultural influences, its stone walls share a common language with that of the houses taken into account in this work. If considering influences it is important to take into account that common people are not only building their own houses, but actively participate in the construction of forts and religious structures. In this way a strong link among the different building typologies is created. The commoners become masons when needed, thus bringing their personal experience into the construction of many buildings and not solely into their houses. Moreover Denwood, as underlined by Bellezza, holds that the cubic form of western Tibetan Buddhist temples was inspired by farmhouses, constituted of flat roofs and massive outer walls, which on a more elaborate scale relied upon local labourers using indigenous materials, thus having a folkish and robust appearance38. Bellezza adds to this that39: Architectural affinities between domestic and religious architecture outlined by Denwood above are undeniable, their squat forms, flat roofs, terraces, and heavy outer walls are architectonic traits that may well have been inspired by the corbelled buildings of pre-Buddhist times. Traditional domestic architecture is probably historically derivative in the same way.

The house form in Ladakh has preserved its protective qualities and sober aspect, almost unchanged, until the late 20th century. The house in Ladakh has been also closely linked to the seasonal life of the family. The weather drastically changes and forces people inside in winter, while in summer people G. Tucci, The Ancient Civilisation of Transhimalaya, Geneva 1973, p. 73.

Denwood quoted in: Bellezza, The ancient… cit., p. 16.

39 Ibidem.

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Carved capital and pillar in the Abagun house

spend most of their time in the open air. The house was intimately connected to the needs of an agrarian society which began a drastic shift only in the last century, when more people could start new activities also offered by the government of India. It is only in the last decades that houses became more ‘open’ and that families divided more and more frequently their properties. The larger windows common in every room and the increased number of new properties are a relatively recent trend.

Far-off Influences: Woodwork Apart from the masonry, it is important to discuss influences on the use of wood in buildings in Ladakh, which would seem to extend its origins far beyond the Himalayas. When looking at religious structures, woodwork in Ladakh is particularly connected to the local ancient tradition, taken from original Indian models, and mediated in the temples built around the 11th century40. Because of the scarce amount of wood available in Ladakh as compared to neighbouring territories, the woodcraft tradition of Kashmir has always been considered the one which mainly influenced the local crafts. Kashmir had been a Buddhist centre for many centuries and Ladakh’s woodwork found in many ancient temples show a Kashmiri-Buddhist influence. Nevertheless, it is more precise to say that Ladakhi artists have been influenced not only by Kashmiris, but also by artists of bordering regions such as Himachal Pradesh, and probably even farther afield41. Looking at the decoration motifs today, even inside houses, one can notice even more foreign influences from India, Nepal as well as from China in some cases42.

Without going into more depth with the analysis of woodwork’s decoration, which is not the main aim of this work, it is useful to clarify a last point. As for the construction techniques, there are no manuals with detailed rules for woodwork in Ladakh. Wood carvings seem to be a more free form of handicraft in particular when made for a dwelling. In a house the motifs can be chosen and interpreted according to the amount of material available, the skill of the carpenter, as well as personal taste. Where wooden P. Mortari Vergara, Tibet Occidentale (Ngari) dal sec. XV al XX, in Mortari Vergara P., Béguin G. (eds.), Dimore Umane, Santuari Divini. Origini, Sviluppo e Diffusione dell’Architettura Tibetana, Roma 1987, pp. 349.

41 H. Poell, The Wood Carvings of Lachutse. A Hidden Jewel of Early Mediaeval Ladakhi Art, in E. Lo Bue, J. Bray (eds.), Art and Architecture in Ladakh, Leiden/Boston 2014.

42 Richardson, Snellgrove, A Cultural… cit.

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elements and woodwork are concerned it is important to begin with analysis of the shingtsak, which has to be made considering the wider Tibetan geo-cultural sphere. The shingtsak, made of several wooden components, is analysed in each of its parts in the following chapters, but one point to make is that in Ladakh, the shingtsak elements, used above windows and doors, characterize in a distinguishable way every construction in which they are employed. In particular when observing a house, even from afar, the use of the shingtsak elements on the façade transforms the whole volume of the building from a simple fabric with openings into a part of the cultural landscape. In religious buildings the shingtsak and other structural elements are emphasized in dimension and number, while houses have more modest timber components. Especially when looking at the interiors of a house, there is nothing which could be compared to the multi-pillared halls of monasteries. For this reason, woodwork especially that integrated above windows on the house’s façade — because it retains peculiar features of the architectural culture — is a remarkable element of the built environment, especially in the case of rural dwellings. This structural system made of interlocking wooden pieces is clearly recognisable even to an untrained eye. The reason for this deserves some more attention. According to Fernand Meyer the woodwork composition can be compared to the classical architectural order in the Western tradition.

Meyer suggests in the larger geo-cultural Tibetan world it was in the 17th century that the woodwork system reached its maturity in a development process which included elements that were a legacy of the past, but organised through a series of typical proportions. Taking into account the composed wooden elements above openings or beams, Meyer draws a comparison with the classical entablature, even if there are differences between structural and decorative systems in the West and the Himalayas. However it seems appropriate to compare the two systems at least for their recognisability and visual value within the respective cultures. The composed timber elements in all their variation (from those above beams to those on windows) could therefore be considered the ‘classical order’ of Tibetan architecture, being an essential structural as well as decorative element characterising the constructions. Nevertheless it should not be assumed that the use of these wooden elements, especially when looking at the different areas of Ladakh, can always be related to a system of fixed proportions. To ascertain if and to what extent this is possible in Ladakh, a more detailed study of the timber elements should be carried out.

An Ever-changing Material Legacy: Chronology Issues of Vernacular Architecture Dating vernacular architecture is most of the time a difficult matter, especially when looking at objects built before the last century. Houses constructed in the last fifty to hundred years are often in the memory of the older people who still remember their construction, addition or reconstruction. Everything built before this period can be hardly dated with precision. In Ladakh, when asking about the dating of an old house, the answer is unknown or vague. One of the ‘most precise’ dating is given by the number of generations, who have inhabited the houses which family members can still remember. It has to be underlined that the house used to be an ‘immutable’ entity in its essence. Its evolutionary changes, not-

historical background

withstanding even substantial modifications to its formal aspect, will not have altered its nature. Necessary maintenance works as well as demolitions or additions were never recorded. The formal changes in a house represent the constant adaptation to new needs for the household. Dating houses is also very difficult because of their quite short lifespan, considering the constant need for repairs and replacements. When a house is totally or partly abandoned the structure decays very easily, and it is common that many of the house materials are taken to be reused in another structure. Houses are normally added to with new parts after the original construction, but later materials are usually identified through an analysis of the structure, a survey of the building or an interview with the family members, as precisely explained by Kimmet in her article on the village of Nako43: Defining architectural styles and chronologies in the context of domestic buildings proves especially challenging because, by their very nature as inhabited spaces, these buildings are susceptible to frequent change.

Yet it is precisely because domestic buildings reflect the everyday, embodied practices of their users that they constitute important documents of the aesthetic values and social history of a village; houses display the cumulative layers of their use, adaptation and decay. Moreover, recent changes in these villages have had a particularly visible effect on local domestic architecture traditions and, as such, have considerable implications for the future of how material cultural heritage and identity are interpreted and handled.

Local tradition, not only in Ladakh but more broadly in the Himalayas, has always been based on oral knowledge and no books were written on the construction methods process. If examining Tibetan literature, this affords several technical texts on arts and crafts which establish very precise codes. The rules fixing the proportions of images and stupas do not extend to temples and monasteries, and no text exists resembling a Chinese or Western treatise on architecture44. If no detailed books on construction have ever been written on the most representative buildings we must assume that nothing existed for simple dwellings, that every family, with the help of an experienced mason, could easily build and repair on its own.

Thus, to the difficulties of establishing a chronology of single houses or villages, is added the issue of precisely understanding the methods for construction in a historical perspective. Nevertheless an attempt can be made, starting by asking the older masons in the region about their life-long personal experience.

Despite the more and more common diffusion of specialized jobs, many people in the villages are still farmers, and part-time craftsmen when necessary. Vestiges of a society in which members had to be able to take care of different activities when needed can be still seen today. Many villages have local masons and carpenters, who are directly involved in the construction of houses and other structures as well as religious buildings, while remaining farmers. Moreover, people in general, not only the builders, but also women and the young, participate in the construction of buildings important for the community, contributing not only financially, but with their labour. Today, the work offered by common people is

43 N. Kimmet, Architectural Palimpsests: Exploring Matters of Production, Inhabitation and Perception in the Vernacular Architecture of Nako, in G. Krist (ed.), Nako. Research and Conservation in the Western Himalayas, Wien KoĚ&#x2C6;ln Weimar 2016, p. 60.

44 E. Lo Bue, Arquitectura Religiosa Tibetana: Monasterios, Templos y Ermitas, in R. Pratis (ed.), Monasterios y lamas del Tibet, Barcelona 2000.

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more out of a desire for cooperation or public duty, rather than the lack of specialisation, but in general it used to be normal for the family members to be involved primarily in the construction of their houses.

Apart from the lack of texts on construction, studying houses in a historical perspective is very limited by the fact that no drawings were used for the design. Simple schemes were made on the ground to decide basic criteria for the plan, directly on site. Only one case has been documented during the fieldwork where a house was built after a model, and thus after a drawing of another existing building. This is the Nangso house in Nyemu. It was built around 80 to 100 years ago, after a drawing made from an existing house in Lhasa (the original is not known), even if it is not clear whether the drawing was a sketch, a plan or another type. The level of detail the original drawing is also not known, neither the scale nor the measuring units. This is a rare example of house built after a specific prototype with the use of a drawing. It is supposed that the copy of domestic buildings from a drawing was more likely a privilege of the well-off.

With the analysis of the house and its constitutive elements, it is interesting to try to understand what were the influences derived from defensive and religious architecture, later adopted in dwellings and vice versa. Technologies and stylistic models among different building typologies probably underwent a complex process of reciprocal influences. It is likely that influences moved in both directions. In general, as stated above, people took part in the construction of buildings for the monarchs and religious communities. For this reason they could have learned from more skilled craftsmen, as well as they could have brought their personal knowledge into other projects. Larger and more sophisticated constructions such as forts, monasteries or temples could have taken advantage of the more elaborated techniques that reached Ladakh from other lands along the trading routes. An example could be the use of timber lacings in the masonry: due to a general scarcity of wood, the addition of wooden lacings was probably made first in the higher walls of forts rather than in the dwellings. Although, when conditions are favourable, and more wood can be used, timber lacings are inserted into the masonry of houses. In the opposite way influences coming from rural customs and used for more important structures can be found according to local sayings. An example is the practice of stacking fire-wood and grass on the rooftop of the farmers’ houses, gradually evolved into the creation of a coloured parapet, chiefly for aesthetic purpose, which has been commonly used in temples, monasteries and palaces. It has to be noticed that even farmhouses started introducing this motif on their roofs at a certain time45. By adding this element on the rooftop of common houses, a darker band is built above the walls, a sort of cornice for the flat-roofed houses. For necessity, above the cornice, grass and hay are again piled up to be stored or dried. Involuntarily, a sort of repetition is created, since the decorative parapet now lies underneath the ‘motif’ from which it originated.

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This type of parapet will be later described more in detail in the analysis of the finishes.

villages

Villages

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In the barren scenery of Ladakh’s valleys, villages stand out from a great distance. As one approaches many of them trees might be the only vertical signs which introduce an agricultural village. In the Buddhist settlements series of stupas, in Tibetan chorten (mchod-rten), and other man made structures are the recognizable elements of the landscape, all positioned at specific points. During summer, these oases become the only green spots of the land, which gradually turn golden as the crop is ripening and when the agricultural season comes to an end, by late August or September. Villages are mainly comprised of houses, and for this reason they are at the centre of the settlement investigation. Villages include to a large extent their natural surrounding, with which they are related and interconnected. Every settlement is shaped by the land conformation, the altitude, the sun orientation and the way the water reaches it. The main unit in a village is the house, and with no other public structures, the house becomes a gathering place and a reference centre for any activity. People often meet in houses and it is very common for everyone to invite guests over and to be invited. Therefore the house should be able to host more people than just the family members, especially for particular occasions like weddings, births or other events, mostly during winter, when all working activities stop. The house epitomizes the ‘indoor space’, as it is the building where people meet not only for special occasions, but throughout the day.

Typologies of Settlement In the past, and until roads reached almost every village in Ladakh, settlements could be mainly subdivided according to their main activity. Referring to the ‘Himalayan Buddhist Villages’, a study carried out in the Ladakhi area of Zangskar in the 1980s, before the road connection reached the innermost part of the region, there were three main typologies of settlements1. These were almost exclusive to one of these functions: monastery, agriculture and animal breeding. The only exception at that time was Padum, which already had administrative functions, and earlier Leh and Kargil, which were also trading centres. Settlements do not only have a unique function anymore. Even the monastic complexes, apart from their religious activities, have become an important destination for tourists. Today, towns like Leh and Kargil not only have major administrative roles towards their districts, but many commercial activities are important to their economy. Furthermore, in the last two decades, tourism H. Osmaston, J. Frazer, S. Crook, Human Adaptation to Environment in Zangskar, in J. Crook, H. Osmaston (eds.), Himalayan Buddhist Villages, Bristol 1994, p. 52.

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previous page Sakti

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Pathway between willows in Mulbekh

has become one of the main sources of income for some villages, in particular those on the main trekking routes.

Monasteries used to have the monopoly of institutionalized education for Buddhist communities, while today almost every village has its own elementary and high school. As far as education is concerned, there are no centres for higher education in Ladakh yet, such as universities, and many young people are moving to other parts of India. However, apart from the recently introduced functions, many of the settlements in Ladakh have just integrated their main activity with others. The main typologies of settlement can be therefore defined as follows: • Villages / ‘Agricultural villages’ • Pastureland • Religious complexes (e.g. monasteries), forts and palaces This chapter examines the agricultural villages, referring to them simply as villages. The reason for this is that villages might not have only agriculture as their basic function nowadays. In the Ladakhi language, villages are called yul (yul), even though the word has a wider range of meanings. As noted by S. Srinivas2: 2 S. Srinivas, The Household Integration and Exchange. Buddhist and Muslims in Nubra Valley, Proceedings of the 6th Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (Leh 1993), Recent Research on Ladakh 6, H. Osmaston, N. Tsering (eds.), Bristol 1997, p. 260.

villages

Yul is a multi-vocal term and can indicate a hamlet, a village, a region, this world, the world of the gods or spirits, etc. The speaker using such a term normally uses it contextually depending on who he is speaking to.

Thus two villagers of a valley may use it with reference to themselves and the other, as referring to a village or hamlet as the case may be. A Kashmiri would be defined as belonging to Kache-yul in conversation with a Ladakhi when the issue of his place is discussed, and so on.

While the word yul refers to a village, its meaning refers especially to agriculture and farming and the villagers are known as yulpa (yul-ba), meaning farmers3. According to Pirie villages in Ladakh are the most clearly bounded units among other forms of association4. Villages may also be formed by different hamlets. These smaller entities forming a village are generally under the guidance of a single man5.

Pastureland is often connected to a specific village and it is found in areas around the main settlement.

In this chapter the relationship between village and pastureland is described, while permanent pastoral communities, their settlements and grazing fields are not considered by this work. Religious complexes and forts are occasionally mentioned, but these specific topics are not analysed, since their religious and defence functions are out of the scope of the research. Among the different settlement typologies, the agricultural village is of paramount importance for the subsistence of all other communities.

Monasteries, forts and palaces in particular, with their need for seclusion and defence, depended on agricultural villages. Their position, often a defensive one on the summit of a hill, did not provide them with land or water for subsistence. Agricultural villages used to supply basic food provision for the entire population of Ladakh, becoming less important, as far as this aspect is concerned, only in recent decades.

Fortified structures were located on hilltops6: These forts included former citadels, which served as the capitals of various ruling dynasties in Leh and Kargil. People believe that villages were formerly located inside the forts to protect them from attacks by bandits who roamed the countryside as well as form enemy invasions. Most of the forts that survive today were heavily damaged during the Dogra wars while some were damaged during the Balti invasion during the reign of King Jamyang Namgyal. Most of the forts listed here are seen to be in danger of disappearance. The fort walls have massive foundations of rubble masonry. The walls are largely battered, tapering towards the top and their upper sections are sometimes made of rammed earth.

Today forts are mainly ruins that have been ‘replaced’ by the Indian military bases all over the region.

Still in need of food provision, these bases are now mainly supplied by mainland India via airplanes.

Large areas of land are occupied by the military that have installed their bases, connected by high quality roads. The bases are clearly identifiable, not only because of the great presence of military vehicles, but mainly for their architecture characterised by reinforced concrete and tin pitched roofs, and total lack of greenery.

Osmaston, Frazer, Crook, Human… cit., p. 54.

F. Pirie 2014, Community, Justice, and Legalism: Elusive Concepts in Tibet, in F. Pirie, J. Scheele, Legalism: Community and Justice, Oxford 2014, p. 231.

5 Legacy of a Mountain People. Inventory of Cultural Resources of Ladakh vol. 1 Leh-Khaltse, NIRLAC, New Delhi 2008, p. IX. 6 Legacy… vol. 1… cit., p. XIII. 3 4

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The fort in Igu

The Village Position A village can be influenced by different factors for its position within the terrain. In the past the main aspects were related to natural elements, while today villages are also influenced by new variables. Here is a list of the main factors: • Natural elements: water, soil and sun • Trading; not possible anymore since 1948 • Road connections • Education and new job opportunities Water, cultivable soil and sun are the main determinants when establishing a village, no matter its dimensions. Villages in Ladakh may count from two to ten households, divided into small hamlets, whereas in some cases they can reach even 400 households. The role of natural elements is essential for the regulation of the agricultural system, determining the way people cultivate, and influencing the productivity of a settlement. Therefore, the number of houses was the result of the production capaci-

villages

ty of that specific area, and every village had a limited growing capacity. Nowadays subsidised food and the opportunity of buying basic daily life items have changed this rule. As a basic but fundamental principle in any settlement flat land is rather used for agriculture than for any building activity. Elderly people, who used to build their own houses, would never use any of their agricultural land to have even a single extra room if not necessary. This point of view shows how important food and fodder production used to be if compared to the position or the dimension of the house. This consideration can still be appreciated in many villages even today. Water, among the other elements, has a central role for the creation of a community. Life in mountain desert environments depends on water and if water supplying a brook dries up, the people living in a hamlet have to leave their houses and their fields become barren land7. This shows that, apart from the recent climate change and its disastrous effects — i.e. floods — natural elements could lead to abandoning a settlement even in the past. The crucial step in making Ladakh’s landforms productive is however circumscribed by the possibility of irrigation, considering the scarce rainfall8. Engineered channels are often needed and they require a great amount of human labour9. The number of people living in a community and the scale of a settlement are the result of the production capacity of the area where the village is positioned, mainly linked to the water reservoirs.

The sun is also an essential element for a settlement for many reasons. The sun is not only essential for agriculture but the village and all the single houses are also oriented according to the sun for light and heating purposes. Generally the solstice points are important in the choice of a settlement location within the terrain10. In some cases the sun determines which part of the village is going to be inhabited only in summer and which in winter. The two parts of Hunderman have been oriented according to this principle. The settlement is positioned to have the winter part facing the east, while the summer one is facing the west. In any case, the single houses are oriented to better catch the sunlight, using their thick walls; thermal inertia, to stay warm during winter months.

Road connection is a contemporary crucial factor in the shaping of villages and it influences many of the new changes. The network of roads is reaching the majority of settlements, and its introduction modified the pattern of many villages. New materials and foreign influences — e.g. non-Ladakhi labour — have modified the image of many settlements with the alteration of local architectural features.

The village appearance is, in some cases, totally different, even from a distance. The closer one gets to the village the more one notices the degree of change in the details of the houses. Areas that have no road connection have mainly to rely on their own food production, or to walk long distances to bring 7 U. Gruber, Man and his Natural Environment in Ladakh, Proceedings of the 1st Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (Konstanz University, 23-26 November 1981). D. Kantowsky, R. Sander (eds.), Recent Research on Ladakh: History, Culture, Sociology, Ecology, Munich-Koln-London 1983, p. 232.

8 Osmaston, Environmental… cit., p. 145.

9 Ibidem.

10 R. Herdick, The Spatial Order of the Area of Yangthang in Ladakh, Proceedings of an International Conference (Heidelberg 25-27 May 1998), Sacred Landscapes of the Himalaya, N. Gutshow et al. (eds.), Vienna 2003, pp. 67-84.

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Terraced fields in Hunderman

supplies from other places. Apart from food, villages that have no road connection have more obstacles in getting the construction materials from outside. It is not possible to bring large quantities of materials such as steel, stone and earth for long distances without a truck that could reach the village. The difference among settlements that are positioned along important roads and those which are not is crystal clear. Where vehicles can have access, the presence of reinforced concrete is strikingly evident. Nevertheless, a main factor that influences the built environment is peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will in bringing a change. On the way to Rumbak it is possible to see people carrying metal rods and cement bricks on their shoulders along a three-hour path from the village of Zingchan, where the road connection ends. Road construction has also boosted the arrival of labourers from other parts of India, mainly Bihar and Nepal. These

workers have almost totally replaced Ladakhis, not only in the main centres, but also around the smaller villages.

The cultivation of land has decreased since locals can have different job opportunities, often out of their villages. Another reason for the decreasing agricultural activities is the introduction of large amounts of subsidized food that is brought in from other parts of India. Because of its low costs and easy availability, it is common for many families now, to partially or totally rely on subsidized food. Schools have also been created on a large scale in order to give people the opportunity to find a job in the government, in the army, in tourism or just to reach a higher education level.

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Building Adaptation to Community Needs The way buildings and houses are located in the village is mainly linked to the specific needs related to local circumstances and time. Houses can be generally placed in a village according to two criteria: • Nuclear group of buildings • Individual households among the village land The reasons for having houses built according to these two criteria are linked to the different needs of the community. Other constructions, such as temples, mosques or community buildings (recent introduction), can find a specific position inside the village according to different criteria. The needs considered in this chapter represent both those that are still of crucial importance and those that were significant only in the past: • Protection need • Cultivation need • Additional land and business need • Seasonal need • Symbolical need: social and spiritual hierarchy The need for protection was essential in the past and many villages were fortified and their houses protected within walls. Fortified villages used to have houses on higher areas than their fields. Not all villages were clustered around forts or monasteries for protection; some were just built with some sort of a fortification concept11. In Kanji, the ancient cluster of houses is still visible. Originally this village had only one entrance through a tunnel below the houses leading to the central square around which the dwellings formed a defensive enclosure12.

Having clusters of houses is generally useful to save the limited cultivable land. Whenever the landscape conformation shows a flat portion this is used for agriculture and the houses are often built along the declivity. The site adaptation to the slope terrain is a strategy that works well especially in narrow valleys that have little or no flat land. Houses are built where land cannot be cultivated, and often are rising on the bare rock. The risks of building on sloped terrains is evident in case of an earthquake, but in spite of that, many villages are built on slopes and this proves that earthquakes occur less in this region than in other areas. In addition, the issue of landslides has gained more and more relevance in recent years. The heavy rain problem is recent, and in a barren land such as Ladakh it is almost impossible to prevent landslides when most of the declivities have no vegetation to prevent rapid erosion.

It is only when the valleys are wide and the water streams are flowing through flat land, that villages are scattered with houses among fields. In some other cases, when the settlement is located in a narrow val-

11 12

Harrison, House… cit., p. 23.

Ivi, p. 24.

villages

ley, not only the houses are built in terraced layers but the fields too. The fields are positioned closer to the water sources and the houses are above them. In this case, by drawing a section of the valley the levels of the settlement can be clearly analysed, from bottom to top: water stream, terraced fields, terraced houses and mountain. These levels are reciprocally functional, since the stream water is close to the meadows and the houses and the storage spaces are just above the fields. A complex system of passages is created above the roofs for connection, allowing people and animals to reach the different levels of the village. In fact, the terraces of a building are the roofs of the houses below and this system is repeated at various levels. These â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;terracesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, interrupted by vertical connections which allow the movements of villagers, are often used as gathering places for the people to sit and chat.

In recent years many villages have grown as never before, in some cases occupying even the portions of flat land that were not used in the past for building purposes. The construction market has increased especially after many Ladakhis could afford to invest money. The roads, allowing better movements of workers and building materials, facilitate the building of new houses to a level that has been never experienced in Ladakh. Especially in Leh, where there are more work opportunities in the tourism sector, the fields in its valley have been more and more replaced with guesthouses and hotels.

According to the seasons, the village can also have two parts used in different seasons of the year: one

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House clusters in Kanji

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Houses among the valley at Pipiting

in which people live in winter and the other where they shift during summer, closer to the fields. Even in Leh, some people had summer and winter houses. What is now called ‘The Old Town’ (in Leh) is a more favourable area in winter. This settlement was built below the Leh Palace, which is the reason why the village was actually founded, and it allowed people to live in a cosier district of houses with their dwelling being on one side against the mountain, more protected from the wind13. The Leh valley, with the fields and more water streams, was a better summer counterpart to the terraced settlement.

Today, during the long winter months, many Ladakhis leave their houses to move to other parts of India. Winter ‘migration’ is also fostered by the several job opportunities offered elsewhere in India. Road problems create a winter-long obstacle, making it impossible to reach Ladakh from the outside and vice versa. Especially in areas where snowfall is heavy, wooden/earth roofs can get damaged if not kept clean on a regular basis. Where people leave their houses for many months during winter, the roofs cannot be maintained on a regular base. For this, the risk of damage and/or collapse could be a possible reason for shifting to reinforced concrete structures or simply choosing concrete finishing for the roofs.

When people were mainly farmers the main activities stopped during the winter months. The families have meetings throughout the winter, inviting their relatives to their homes. This long period of the year is a great moment for celebrations, centred on gatherings in houses especially during the time of the Ladakhi new year: losar (lo-gsar).

13

Ivi, p. 23.

villages

Social and religious hierarchies are often manifested through architecture. These tangible manifestations can be seen in single houses or on the whole village scale. Social hierarchy, for example, is visible in the settlement layout14: The physical structures reflect the social hierarchy: the castle of the ruler occupies the highest point with its subjects clustered below, but all are defensively united on a mountain top. At the royal sites of Shey and Leh a gradual relaxation of this principle can be traced. The fortress ruins at Shey, perhaps dating from the 15th century, are built at the very top of the crag overlooking the Indus River. In the early 17th century they were superseded by the palaces and temples situated much closer to the valley floor, and the village began to spread out into the surrounding fields.

In Kyagar, the old settlement has a particular house built above all the other houses which are now in ruins. This house shows prestigious architectural features and it has much bigger dimensions than any other ordinary house. The house is a zimskhang (gzims-khang), denoting the higher status of the family living in it. A family with a higher rank owns a zimskhang and that might be due to an act of bravery, social largess or duty to the king. For one of these reasons the family received this title in the past15.

Drew describes Leh, in the 19th century, through a vertical sequence that clearly shows the different statuses according to the position of the households and palace16: Here by the farther edge of this cultivated space, on one of the branch spurs from the hills and spreading on to the plain in front of it, is built the town of Leh. The most conspicuous object in it is the palace of the former rulers, an edifice boldly built up to the height of eight or ten stories from the shoulder of the spur; a slight in-leaning of the massive walls gives it a great look of strength. Higher up, on the same rocky ridge, are the monastery and the towers of an old fortification. Below, in front of the palace, houses cover the slope. On the flat beneath is the newer part of the town. Entering from the direction of Kashmir we pass through a small gateway and find ourselves in a long, wide, and straight bazaar, the houses regularly built and uniformly whitewashed. This has been erected since the Dogras took the country, and is now the place that is most frequented. At the farther end of this bazaar one passes into the old part of the town, among houses separated by narrow winding passages. As one rises on the slope of the hill one meets with a few houses of a higher class; these built by the Kahlons, or ministers of the former sovereigns, and now for the most part belong to their representatives. Outside the city are several gardens, or what are here so called; in truth they are plantations of willow and of poplar. [â&#x20AC;Ś] On the east of the town the mountains are near and there is no cultivation; but to the west, the whole width of the valley, about three-quarters of a mile, is of cultivated land, descending in terraces, with small hamlets scattered over it.

From the 17th century the power of the monasteries increased and, together with it, the position of the monasteries started becoming dominant, replacing the castles with their fortress-like mass on the hilltops17. The Tibetan Buddhist sects, with the favour of the kings of Ladakh, could gain more influence and later on the built monasteries became physically preponderant, standing out above the houses of monks and villagers as in Thikse, Stakna and Chemre18.

Ivi, p. 21.

Srinivas, The Householdâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 258.

16 F. Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir territories. A geographical Account, London 1875, pp. 236-237.

17 Harrison, Houseâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 23.

18 Ibidem.

14 15

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Apart from considering temporary power it is interesting to understand how the ordering of the world, according to the society, can also be represented on the village and house scale. The spatial hierarchy regarding the cosmological order is both related to the folk religion and to Buddhism. M. Brauen found in the Ladakhi marriage songs this clear distinction of the three levels19: • The gods level; the highest one • The human level • The natural level Stein, underlines how these levels find correspondence in different elements of Tibetan material culture, such as the stones set up to honour the gods: lhatho (lha-tho)20. Concerning the lhatho in Ladakh, cairns are the abode of local deities, and according to Gerald Kozicz their construction is found in every part of the physical and metaphysical topography21. In villages they can be found high above a settlement, on the houses or temples and even down rivers. Every lhatho has a specific position, therefore function: from the social to the natural ones. However, according to Kozicz, in Ladakh, lhathos which are built according to the three-tired division explained by Stein have not been studied. In the threetiered vertical scheme including: sky, earth, and the world under the earth, the middle level, the only one occupied by men, is thought of as a ladder between the other two22.

Pastureland and Village Names Some portions of land are mainly used as pastureland for the herds and they are called: drog (‘brog).

The pastureland is generally situated at a higher level, compared to the villages, and can reach in some cases even 4500 m. These settlements are seasonal, the villagers use them only in summer, when occupied with agriculture. Water streams flow only in summer, allowing the abundant growth of grass for the animals to graze. People bring animals to the pastureland and leave them to graze for the whole day. Villagers build very simple shelters for this purpose, generally made of stone, to reside in the area.

These huts, called pulu (pu-lu), also allow people to spend the night or simply to rest during the long days away from home. Dwellings around pasturelands are single-storey constructions made out of rubble stones and smaller compared to village houses.

Village names are described because they frequently reveal interesting relationships between the villages and their buildings, or else the natural environment. Villages usually take their names from specific characteristics selected in the period of their establishment. Names can be modified according to further alteration of the settlement or important event. If the specific features related to a name have not changed, the village preserves the original one, or its name can be transformed into a simplified

Brauen quoted in: Herdick, The Spatial… cit., p. 70.

Stein, Tibetan… cit., pp. 203-204.

21 Interview: Gerald Kozicz.

22 Stein, Tibetan… cit., p. 41.

19 20

villages

form, usually a contracted form. In some other cases names change completely, since a more important meaning has modified the original one.

The village of Hemis Shukpachen is famous for its sacred juniper grove and that is where it takes its current name from it; shukpa (shug-pa) is the Ladakhi word for juniper. In the past the village used to be called Hemis Koron Tukchu, meaning Hemis Sixty Houses. The former name is not only useful to understand that the village used to have sixty households: it is also giving the implicit information that a village would not vary the number of its households very often. This fact is confirmed by the habit of keeping intact household possessions, generation after generation, to maintain the propertyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s integrity.

In this way the village structure could not be easily modified and the number of houses remained constant. On the other hand the village of Kanji maintains a strong relationship with the original meaning of its name and its geographical collocation. Kanji has adopted a simplified version of its name which was originally composed of: rock precipice, yan (gyan-sa,) and four, zhi (bzhi)23. The name came from the position of the settlement that is located between four cliffs. Since the village has not changed position, its name still connects to its roots. Some other villages have not only simplified their names but the original meaning has lost the past relevance. Khardong is an example. The village gets its name from fortified castle, khar (mkhar), and watchtower/fort, dzong (rdzong): since the original settlement was founded inside a fort. Today, even if it is not an essential part of the village anymore, the fort can still be seen on the hill of Yuldoma, in ruins24.

23 24

Interview: Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa.

Legacy of a Mountain People. Inventory of Cultural Resources of Ladakh vol. 4 Nubra, NIRLAC, New Delhi 2008, p. 177.

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A house in the pastureland of Kanji

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the house

The House

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the house

The house is the family ground, the ‘inside’ and the first production unit, while being the hinge for most social activities . The house in Ladakh had been the centre of life because of the absence of any 1

other civil structure. The main social gathering events like births, weddings and death ceremonies take place in it. Furthermore, the house had been the anchor for the family, establishing a direct connection with the ancestors2. The house is a microcosm which embodies the universe and its parts, a world in miniature often thought of as a square pointing to the four main directions3. The house form, shaped during centuries by a lifestyle that was inseparable from the land products and the herds, has been reshaped mainly in the last four decades. Dwellings are made of a series of rooms that are not only for the family members, but especially made for the products stored and animals kept, a feature mirrored in particular in the old ones, whose inhabitants relied only on farming. Houses usually had two to three storeys, while today new constructions often have only the ground floor. Family members often shared a single room, the fireplace room. There used to be no specific rooms for each family member, since space was scarce and collective life was common. Socially, being alone was not even considered polite in many cases4. It is in summer that family members sleep in different parts of the house, including the rooftop, freed from the restrictions of the cold weather.

The Name of a House The household represented a group of people sharing the same fireplace, and for this reason this group had the same name attributed to the household itself; in Ladakhi this replaces western surnames5.

Every new child should preferably born in his/her father’s house so that lineage and place could correspond. In any case, a child born in another house does not belong to that house, as his patrilineal link is more important6. Those who permanently reside in a household are considered its members, as well as those who are ‘born inside’ it. Women who are getting married change their house and become part of P. Dollfus, B. Fiore, L’opposizione Sessuale nello Spazio Domestico in Ladakh, “La Ricerca Folklorica. Antropologia dello Spazio”, April 1985, n. 11, p. 39.

2 R. Khosla, Buddhist Monasteries in the Western Himalaya, Kathmandu 1979, p. 101.

3 Stein, Tibetan… cit., p. 41.

4 P. Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi du Cachemire, Paris 1981, p. 146.

5 P. Dollfus, Lieu de Neige et de Genévriers. Organisation Sociale et Religieuse des Communauté Bouddhistes du Ladakh, Paris 20052, p. 146.

6 Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 208.

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Abandoned house in Wakha

their new household. The household is the ordinary institution in villages. For instance, common decisions were taken according to each household; every household counted as one vote inside the village assembly, officiated by the goba7.

This premise is useful to understand that houses in Ladakh are not defined as mere constructions. The building takes its designation only according to who lives in it, therefore the house walls are the limits for the social groups8. A house can have different names such as: khangpa (khang-ba), khangchhen (khang-chen), khangbu (khang-bu) or khangchhung (khang-chung), which correspond to main house, big house, little house and small house9. Khangpa refers to the main house, as well as khangchhen. The head of the family (usually the elder brother) is in charge of the khangpa, which can be considered the household in general, including all the fields and land related to the ancestral property. Smaller fractions of the main house are those units allotted to family members who are not living in the main house anymore. Extended families are common for Ladakhis, and it was usual for parents to move from the khangchhen to the khangchhung when the elder son got married hence the role of head of the family was passing from the father to the elder son. The khangchhung is a small and more simple house built within the family property in which the old parents live. This applies to the Buddhists while the Muslim family members live all together since Muslims do not practice polyandry10. In some cases a rivalry in the family could end up with the separation of one of the brothers who built a house on his own, usu-

next page House on the cliff in Skyurbuchan

ally a smaller property. This person would add to his family name the word khangbu to specify that he split from the original household. The word trongpa (grong-ba) can be translated as ‘residential com-

Ivi, p. 225.

Ivi, p. 135.

9 Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 129.

10 A. Rieger Jandl, Architecture in the Global Tension of Increasing Cultural Interactio. An Anthropological Approach Towards Building in Developing Countries Underlined by a Fieldstudy in Ladakh, PhD Dissertation, Wien 2002, p. 202.

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plex’11: it includes stables, winter and summer quarters and originally refers to the whole family living under the same roof as opposed to the split families of khangpa and khangchhung. Today trongpa mainly refers to the main house in an extended family that is divided; in general a household that is a full member of the village council.

Ladakhi use many words to define the kind of dwellings or parts of a house according to their function.

Yarsa (dbyar-sa) is the summer residence and it has two meanings: it refers to the summer storey in a house (generally the upper one), or a small construction among fields and grazing lands where it is possible to sleep during summer when the work in the fields is intense12. The winter quarter is known as gunsa (dgun-sa) and this definition can indicate both a house part or a whole dwelling as well. It was common in the past that a family would have a house for the summer months, possibly near the fields, and another one for winter, usually built among a more compact building agglomeration, so to be more protected. Today this difference has disappeared in many villages, and households divided in yarsa and gunsa are not found anymore13.

Basic Principles for the Construction of a House Every house is different even if some basic criteria are generally followed for functional reasons. Houses can vary a lot according to their site, owners and particular circumstances at the time of their construction or renovation. Differences can be seen on a macroscopic level, while subtler diversities appear only when one looks closer into the dwelling. There are no strict rules and exceptions are always possible. These basic principles are as follows: • Orientation • Plan-scheme and dimensioning • Construction process, season and workers • Dimension, shape and height of rooms N

Orientation W

E

The orientation of a house follows some practical rules and in some cases these correspond to astrological considerations and religious aspects as well. The main façade, the one provided with larger openings, is south oriented to better catch the sun radiation and the direct light. The entrance is often locat-

S

•

Scheme of the house orientation

ed on the east not only because of religious prescriptions. The practical reason for not having openings on the north or west, but rather on the east, is to stop the cold winds and to avoid heat dispersion14. According to the direction of the winds, there can be rooms oriented to west or south-west so that they can Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 135.

Ibidem.

13 Ibidem.

14 Interview: Fakir Mohammad Khan.

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be cooler in summer15. The considerations about winds are not always the same and they are also related to altitude and summer temperatures which are different throughout Ladakh. After determining the exact position of a building the attention focuses on the nearest water flow and the drainage of the

Regular | Flat terrain, valleys

whole building is oriented towards that direction .

16

Plan Scheme and Dimensioning The house does not always have a regular shape, since it is generally adapted to the terrain. The family

Adapted to the ground | Rocky terrain, mountain side

can add new rooms or build up a new storey if needed. In most cases buildings were not built according to a pre-established design and the family decided everything with the master mason, the rtsikspon, at the beginning of the construction process. When a house is free standing in the fields it is more likely to have a regular plan shape such as a square or rectangle. Later additions may alter the original mass

Later addition | Any type of ground

and expand the fabric in a more dynamic composition of volumes. When houses are built on mountains the plan might be kept regular and squarish, though the section of the building rises following the slope. For practicality, using a regular shape is a way to save space and to allow an easier disposition of rooms, but on the rugged rocky surface it is often more simple to adapt to the topographical features.

More regular buildings, especially with squarish plans, are found mostly in the valleys or plains. Regularity is also beneficial when the structural system is based on load bearing masonry that does not allow much variation on the plan scheme.

The mason in charge of the construction would draw a plan scheme directly on the ground to establish the position of the walls. This could be done only when all the prerequisites for the work had been completed: once all the materials were gathered and the starting date had been fixed then the construction could begin. The family decided the house dimensions according to its needs and possibilities with the help of the mason. Therefore, the best dimensioning and the number of storeys was determined considering the number of family members, the related agricultural land and its production capacity (in order not to waste land and to have enough storage space) and the family wealth.

Wealth is an important criterion that affects not only the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall dimensions but also the amount of wood and decorations that a household can afford. A familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wealth is shown in the household both inside and outside. The majority of houses had only two storeys and the family life shifted from winter on the ground floor to summer on the first floor17. Only the well-off could afford to build three or more floors.

Since family members are now living separately more and more often, the houses became divided into several units. In Padum, mason Mohammad Nizamuddin used to live in a bigger house with all his family members when he was younger. After his sons grew up and got married he decided to dismanInterview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

D.B. Borah, Conservation Manual for Traditional Building Repair in Ladakh Region of Indian Himalayas, Delhi 2014, p. 26.

17 Interview: Tsering Tundup Schiachiopa.

15 16

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Plan schemes

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12 m2 Stables Toilets Sleeping rooms Distribution spaces Storage rooms

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Scheme of the Modular System

24 m2 Fireplace rooms Guest rooms Rabsal rooms Distribution spaces Large storage rooms Stables

32 m2 Fireplace rooms Guest rooms Rabsal rooms Distribution spaces Large stables

50 m2 Almost exclusively for large households’ fireplace rooms

tle his old house. For this reason he used almost exclusively the same materials from the old building, creating a smaller house for himself and his wife and two more for his sons. This shows the typical approach (not totally lost today) for which materials from an old building are never wasted, but they are entirely reused for a new construction.

Construction Process, Season and Workers In the past houses were built by a team of local masons and the family also took part in the construction. Masons and carpenters came almost exclusively from the same village. When there was no money people traded their work for materials or mutually helped each other. The construction of a house followed the seasonal agricultural needs but at the same time it had to be carried out during the favourable months of the year since construction works could not be done in winter. The construction process was much slower than nowadays and this is still considered by old masons the best way of conducting building works in order to have a higher quality result18. Today the competitive market has caused a general lowering of construction quality, also due to the acceleration of the entire process. The family is not involved in the building activity anymore (except for a few cases) and cheap labour is preferred.

Many builders are now coming from Bihar or Nepal, since their work is cheaper than the Ladakhis’.

Generally, non-Ladakhi workers are not familiar with the local practice and this is also one of the main reasons causing the loss of knowledge on the construction techniques. Recently introduced technologies, such as reinforced concrete and steel, are often improperly implemented because of the general lack of knowledge proved by unskilled labourers in Ladakh. Therefore, both concrete and steel, materials which are locally seen as durable and advanced, do not provide the expected performance; however these side effects will only be noticed in the next decades.

Dimension, Shape and Height of Rooms Rooms are generally quite small, apart from the main fireplace room where most of the activities are carried out and people hosted. The dimensions of the rooms are decided according to the number of people to be hosted or the materials to be stored. Since it is difficult to find rafters that can cover a wide 18

Interview: Tundup Namgyal Manepa.

the house

area without bending, masons lay a system of columns, primary and secondary beams to form a grid inside larger rooms. In general rooms have a rectangular shape and in some cases, when buildings are adapted to a hillside, some of the walls can be irregular. Regularity is not always an important factor in terms of use, especially in villages clustered on a slope for which adaptation is the main criterion to be considered.

Rooms used to have low ceilings for being easily kept warmer. People carry out their activities sitting on the floor hence the lower height of the ceiling is compensated by the lower point of view of the people in the room. These two factors conditioned the rooms’ height, allowing a person to stand and at the same time minimising the heat dispersion. In general rooms are 7 to 8 feet (210-245cm) high, whether including the roof structure or not. Windows are very close to the floor in order to allow the person sitting inside the house to look outside. This is a normal habit because, apart from low tables, there usually are no other pieces of furniture. When standing inside very old houses (and in some ruins still having part of the roof) it is possible to see that the horizontal structures can even be as low as 6 feet (180cm) and, in the proximity of a beam, there is the need to bend over to keep on walking. It is more common for new houses to have higher ceilings and to find furnished rooms with sofas, beds and chairs. In some cases furniture creates an odd effect in low rooms having low windows. In this case, objects like beds or sofas alter the room proportions, creating an unpleasant contrast, since the low room was not made to host western furniture. Quite interestingly villagers in Hunderman declared that whenever deciding the height of a room they would never use integer numbers, therefore they would use 7 feet and 2 inches (7’2’’) instead of 7 feet (210cm). Still in Hunderman, when selecting the room size on a plan, the measurements expressed in feet always correspond to odd numbers, e.g.: 5, 7, 9 and 11 feet.

The Use of Anthropometry as a Measuring Tool Before the introduction of the Indian Imperial units and the metric system, it was common to use the local anthropometric method in determining lengths. Length units, at least those considered in this chapter, had specific connections to the human body so that everyone could measure anything needed anytime. Unlike other civilizations, such as for the towns in Middle Age’s Italy, there were no public samples to be used as reference measurements. Constructions did not need millimetric precision

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Scheme of the House Height

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and what was more important was to be able to use these units at anytime. Local units show the Ladakhi pragmatic approach to measurement and, apart from young people, many Ladakhis still remember the former measurement units.

Starting from the shorter unit, here is a list of the main length measurements: • Sor (sor): a finger width • Tho (mtho): hand span, the distance between the thumb and the middle finger • Trhu (khru): cubit, the length from the elbow to the closed fist or open hand middle finger tip • Dompa (‘dom): the distance between the shoulder and the middle fingertip of the opposite arm stretched out to one’s side • Kompa (gom-ba): a step The cubit is still used for measuring how much cloth is needed to sew the local Ladakhi dress, the gonchha. Rooms and fields were also measured in trhu by using a previously marked thread.

constituent parts of the house

The house is a comprehensive building made of several rooms which are articulated in a series of parts, sometimes added to the house during later construction activities. From the smallest of dwellings, made of a room for the family, a toilet and a simple store-room with stables, farm houses can be large constructions including a vast number of rooms for any purpose and season. The house form is analysed and compared with the shifts which occurred in the last century which can clearly be analysed and put into a historical context, so as to give an ample idea of how a dwelling used to be conceived and has recently evolved.

Stables Animals are a necessary resource in any agrarian society, for which they are a priceless community support for their labour. Moreover, they produce dairy, wool which is used to make clothes, and also dung which is dried and used as fuel. Every family owns animals which are kept on the ground floor during the cold months. In winter, animals are protected against severe temperatures and at the same time their body heat is transferred to the upper level of the house â&#x20AC;&#x201D; where people live. In this way the stables are part of a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;heating systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that, together with the fireplace of the main living room, makes the house warmer in winter. The close relationship between humans and animals, established by the functional distribution of the house, used to be typical of almost all agrarian societies.

The openings on the ground floor are the smallest in the house and they make this level the darkest one. Some inner rooms have no openings at all. Windows here are used mainly for ventilation and they are slits so that heat does not get dispersed much; at the same time they ensure structurally sounder basement walls. Stables are generally called tangra (dag-ra or dang-ra) but they can also have other names according to the animals they accommodate. The horse stable is called stara (rta-ra), and it is also used for other large size animals. The stables for smaller animals, like sheep and goats, are called lugra (lug-ra). One of the main differences between these stables is that larger animals have to be tethered. Therefore these stables have troughs to which animals are tied so that they can eat without moving around. The lugra have no fodder containers since animals are kept untied. Families owning a large number of cattle usually built extra stables, always nearby the household, sharing one or more outer walls of the house. In this case baby animals were kept on a higher level from the ground to be more protected. Farmers started to shift all stables outside the houses only in the last two decades. At

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Rakupa House Second Floor Rooftop 1. Open toilet 2. Room 3. Offering room / Private chapel 4. Glass room 5. Guest room

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the beginning this was done in order to prevent animal excrements from being unintentionally spread around the house and, nowadays, this is mainly due to the fact that many families do not own as many animals as in the past; sometimes they have no animals at all. This important life-style change made

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Courtyard connected to the stables in the Latsas house in Sumur

a considerable difference to the ground floor, previously containing the stables, both in poor and rich houses as well as in palaces and monasteries. In a house the ground floor is generally made of thick rubble stone walls. If wooden columns and beams are used they are usually kept as simple wooden pieces with bark and no decorations, since their function is almost exclusively structural.

In Sumur, the Latsas Khangpa has a particular cattle shed on the ground floor. In the centre of the house a large central opening on the stable roof creates a courtyard which visually connects the stables to the first floor terrace. From the first floor this wide opening to the stables reveals a series of richly decorated columns with capitals showing that attention was paid to enrich precious wooden elements even in utilitarian spaces, in wealthier households. Apart from roofed stables there can be simple enclosures called yarlas (dbyar-las)1. The yarlas are enclosures with limited sheltering spaces that are used mainly in summer or in good weather conditions.

1

Legacyâ&#x20AC;Ś vol. 1â&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. XIII.

previous page Entrance to the stables on the ground floor of the Pakkar house in Igu

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Chansa in the zimskhang of Kyagar

Fireplace Room The central domestic space is the fireplace room that hosts the main household activities. In this room the family cooks, eats around the fireplace, receives relatives and guests, sleeps, prays and spends time together, especially in winter. This room is generally known in Ladakhi as chansa (byan-sa), which is also commonly identified as ‘kitchen’ in western terminology. Otherwise this room can be called thabsa, meaning ‘the stove place’. Defining this room simply as ‘kitchen’ would underestimate its multifaceted aspects and importance. Therefore, the Ladakhi name is used here to identify this multipurpose space. During the winter months, when temperatures drop below zero, people have to make the best use of the scarce fuel to keep themselves warm. By burning fuel for cooking in the chansa, the consumption of combustible is made more modest because in this way only a single room needs to be heated. Having different rooms with a fireplace is common and these are used according to the seasons.

The chansa can be found on the first floor (more common), on the ground floor, or in a smaller version on the rooftop for summer use.

If a house has a single chansa this would be commonly found on the first floor. In general the largest and main chansa is on the first floor, and other fireplace rooms are usually smaller, notwithstanding the case of very large households. When a fireplace room is on the ground floor it generally has no

constituent parts of the house

windows but only a ventilation hole in the ceiling. This room is usually surrounded by stables, and by a narrow passage called shrol (srol), or placed so that another room creates a cavity to better insulate the chansa from the outside. In Yogma Kharbu the Kacho Khan house is provided with a ‘filter’ space, a simple room of 2 m2, with two doors used to avoid draughts in the coldest months. Sometimes the ground floor can be slightly sunk in the ground to be even more protected. The ground floor chansa are meant to be used in winter, therefore they are darker, deep inside the house, and less ventilated for better insulation. Chansa on the ground floor are still found today, even if the majority are not in use anymore. Most of them have been transformed into storage rooms. The fireplace room on the rooftop, used during the summer months, is a space mainly limited to cooking since the family spends most of the time outside in the fields.

Ventilation is always obtained through a hole in the ceiling that remains constantly open. The hole is known as thokskar, (thog-skar) meaning roof-window, or dutkhung (dud-khung) meaning smokehole. In case of bad weather the hole can be covered, even if rain was not an issue in the past. In the older households the chansa is quite a dark room, especially when it has no windows and the thokskar is the only opening for both ventilation and light. An example of chansa disposition is that which has two fireplace rooms one on top of the other. In this way the thokskar are aligned so that the lower room has a vertical connection to the upper room for having better ventilation and light. The orientation of the fireplace room has no strict rules. When a chansa has windows it is preferably oriented towards the South or the East to capture direct sunlight, avoiding also cold winds from entering the living space.

The introduction of glass in the 20th century drastically changed the necessity to keep the openings very small. Chansa have become much brighter rooms and in some cases an entire wall can be covered with glass. The excessive use of glass has reduced the insulation properties of the chansa, which releases warmth quickly from the window panes, especially in winter, even if southward oriented.

The fireplace room used in winter might be called gunkhang (dgun-khang) or gunsa (dgun-sa), even if sometimes a smaller room next to the chansa — e.g. a storage space — is called gunsa and it is used in the coldest period since it remains warmer being a smaller room. In summer people mainly lived outside and families used to sleep on the terraced roof. As a counterpart to the winter room is the summer quarter, yarkhang (dbyar-khang), a small room that needs to host almost exclusively the cooking and eating activities in good weather conditions. The yarkhang has windows which are generally larger than those found in the winter quarters.

When the house is very small, the fireplace room becomes the only living space in the household, fulfilling all necessary indoor functions. In certain hamlets the chansa is also used as an assembly hall for the entire village, as in Yurutse. According to this need all village members should be able to gather inside a single room. Yurutse is a village consisting of a single house. The house is linked to the near village of Rumbak since the family moved its residence from the main village core. During particu-

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The ventilation hole in the ground floor fireplace room of the Dogs Abapa house in Mulbekh (left) Summer chansa on the rooftop in the Abagun house in Hemis Shukpachan (right)

lar occasions, when all villagers in Rumbak have to meet (approximately 10 households), the Yurutsepa’s chansa is able to host all of the villagers. The chansa size shows how many members constitute the household and how many guests could be hosted. In this way a chansa is a marker of the household wealth, being one of the most representative rooms in a dwelling for it is the room of the house that usually accommodates the guests.

There are specific elements characterizing the chansa that make it different from any other room in a house. These are: • Fireplace: thap (thab) • Pillar / Main pillar: ka / kachhen (ka or kaba / ka-chen) • Shelves: langs (slangs)

Fireplace The fireplace, in Ladakhi thap, is an essential element of the chansa, combining both cooking and heating functions. Food is prepared on the thap and the family gathers around it to eat and talk. The thap is a clay stove on a stone base equipped with a goatskin bellow2. The fireplace has undergone many changes in the last century and people shifted from the clay thap to a metal version of it around 30-40 years ago. The fabrication of these metal stoves is a ‘new’ Ladakhi craft since it was born out of the readily available oil drums that were imported by the army in the 1960s3. Size and decorations were partly maintained, but the metal version is a hybrid between the clay one and the one introduced by the Moravian missionaries in earlier times4. Nowadays it is more common to see a thin metal stove with chimney, and a gas stove substituting the old thap. Metal stoves are positioned in a new area of the kitchen or used as a substitute for the clay stove. A gas stove is generally placed on a piece of furniture and not on the floor. In this way, even if the metal stove could also be used for cooking, its main use is for heating, while most of the cooking is done on the new stove.

Chimneys were not used until the Moravian Missionaries introduced them5. For this reason, even if a room had upper ventilation hole and windows, these were not enough to prevent soot from depositing on every surface of the chansa. This can be clearly seen in many households, even if chimneys have been installed, witnessing the previous lack of a chimney or its unsuccessful positioning. However the chansa is not covered with soot anymore, since open fireplaces are not commonly used indoors. In this way the chansa are much brighter rooms, having no soot deposits and larger windows.

2 P. Murdoch, Vernacular House Form in Ladakh, in Man and His House in the Himalayas: Ecology of Nepal, G. Toffin (ed.), Delhi 1991, p. 234.

3 Rieger Jandl, Architecture… cit., p. 265.

4 Ibidem.

5 Interview: Abdul Ghani Sheikh.

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The fireplace room of the Spun Chungpa house in Mulbekh with the trace of the fireplace, the main pillar and the structure of the shelves

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Thab in the Igu Gonpa

Generally, in large chansa — those with two or four pillars — there is also an extra fireplace: mera (mera), a shallow hole in the floor fitted with a metal structure known as lchagsget, a simple metal frame that can support cooking pots. The mera is often kept burning throughout the night in winter6. This simple fireplace is also found in more modest households as the main or only fireplace. In large chansa, thap is put on one side of the room near the water tanks, while mera is in the centre of the room. During daytime, in winter, people sit around the mera doing handiworks such as spinning wool, sewing or knitting. This second fireplace is positioned directly under the smoke outlet so that this brighter area is more suitable for different manual activities. Next to the fireplace there are the fuel reserves that are almost constantly burned in winter. The main fuel being burned is animal dung and shrubs (nowadays the fire is started using alcohol or kerosene). Another kind of fireplace is also found sometimes. This fireplace is built against a wall of the chansa and it is a three-dimensional structure made out of four vertical wooden rods stuck to the floor and the ceiling. In the upper part of the structure, rods are tied together using thin willow branches covered with mud to create a chimney. This upper part is smokeproof because it is covered with a mud mixture that insulates the outlet. It is likely that this kind of fireplace with a chimney was introduced much later than the more common thap.

6

Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 150.

constituent parts of the house

Thap is also the abode of a goddess: thaplha rgyalmo (thab-lha rgyal-mo) the queen goddess of the hearth7. As reported by Pascal Dollfus, the goddess of the hearth is an important deity among folk gods, and one of the reasons is that the goddess receives daily care from the family, especially from the woman (being the ‘nourishing mother’) who has a special relationship with the hearth8. Whenever a bride moved to her husband’s house she repeated in front of the thap: ‘om a ju, thablha rgyalmo, om a ju, meaning: Om, I greet you with respect goddess of the hearth, om I greet you9. The thap might have lost its primary cooking function, but its relevance in terms of spiritual and social values it is still recognizable. Sitting in the chansa closer to the thap is a sign of respect, and the elderly are generally given the honour to take this place10. Clay thap can be very different in size and decoration and it is interesting to notice that, on metal thap, the name of the artisan who made it is commonly written, as well as the price paid for its making.

Pillar/Main Pillar If only a single pillar has to be used in a house, this would be placed in the chansa. The wooden pillar, ka, accomplishes both structural, spatial and organisational functions. Only one ka is considered to be the main pillar, kachhen (ka-chen), among the others in the chansa. The main one is the one standing closer to the thap. Since the pillar is in a central position inside the room, this element becomes a spatial hinge in the chansa configuration, defining two main areas that will be later explained. Together with its structural and spatial importance, the pillar in the chansa is also a main symbolic element for the living quarter, in which a deity resides. The main pillar seems to be the abode of a fertility deity for both land and animals, even if no specific name is given to this being as compared to others found in the house such as the thaplha rgyalmo. The churner hangs from the main pillar and the first made butter is offered to the pillar god, so that herds’ fecundity and abundant milking could be assured11. Moreover, at the beginning of the harvesting season, the first part of the crop is offered to the pillar, and the barley stem is put around the ka. This offering is called ‘offering for the gods of the beginning’ and while the wife is hanging the barley at the base of the capital, her husband is invoking the god, thanking and asking it to ensure a good harvest12. The pillar becomes the focus where offerings are dedicated to the household’s prosperity and where more rituals are carried out during New Year. During losar not only the main pillar but also other wooden elements in the chansa are decorated for the event taking place. Columns, rafters and shelves are decorated with a mixture of barley flour and water of different shapes. Small dots representing the stars are drawn in the chansa. Swastikas and auspicious words Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 142.

Ivi, pp. 142-143.

9 Ibidem.

10 Rieger Jandl, Architecture… cit., p. 265.

11 Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 141.

12 Ibidem.

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Scheme of the fireplace room

Entrance to store room | dzot Shelves | langs Fireplace made of clay | thap Elevated area paved in wood Main pillar | kachen Wooden floor | shen Fireplace | mera

Wooden partition | daber

Entrance to the fireplace room

are also written in the chansa. A moon and a solar disk are represented on the pillar capital, recalling a chorten13 structure, which is an architectural image of the world14. In this way the chansa is symbolically transformed into a visual representation of the world, with the main pillar as its axis and support. Because these symbols and words drawn during losar have an auspicious meaning and they represent happiness in the household, these are not painted in case a family has lost one close member during the year. Moreover15.

The household deity known as the khim lha is also manifest in the house and depictions of the deity are made in dough and placed on the central kaju (capital) of the room or on the shelves on which the vessels are placed lang ska.

Shelves Wooden shelves, langs, are a noticeable part of the kitchen where most of the household belongings are displayed. The position of the objects on the shelves helps the easier daily use of the objects. Horizontal wooden planks joined with wooden rods are the simplest version of these shelves, mainly to be found in old or poorer houses. There is always a proportion between the kitchen dimension and the dimension and number of pots in a household. Shelves hold dishes, cups, tea and chang16 containers, metal pots, stone pots and metal cutlery. Nowadays langs also display imported china, plastic and ceramic dishes, cups, and a large variety of thermos and pressure cookers. The household’s wealth is partly represented by the shelves’ dimension, their decorations, and the amount and size of the utensils displayed in them.

At the chansa entrance there used to be a wooden partition known as daber (da ber / ta ber / mda’ ber).

This had two functions: protecting the room from any air blowing inside and creating a visual filter between inside and outside. This threshold used to be an important element when the house had a main single room: the chansa. The daber used to be a spatial filter between the distribution space and the

The wooden post placed inside the structure of a chorten is conceived as the axis mundi.

Ibidem.

15 Legacy… vol. 1… cit., p. XIII. 16 Fermented drink made of barley.

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chansa where many social activities were carried out at the same time. We do not find this in recently built houses. The flooring in a chansa is usually made of earth that becomes more and more compact because of the constant movement of the people and activities carried out in this room. People used to sit directly on the floor, and excluding a limited numbers of rugs used nearby the fireplace, the floor was kept bare. An earth floor is good to maintain the room warm, in particular when the floor becomes the surface for all the activities, including sleeping. Beneath a kitchen floor it was common to have silos covered with hatches where people stored grains or food. In some cases, removable planks in the wooden floor hid hatches. Hatches for food storage are known as panga (bang-ba). Layers of carpets and rugs covering the whole chansa floor are a recent introduction. The level of comfort guaranteed by an earth floor is double: warmth and also a less rigid surface are guaranteed with it. Whether the floor is covered with insulating materials such as rugs or not, a cement finish is not the same as an earthen one, not even during summer months. In case a family could afford to have wooden flooring, shen (shen), this would be used to pave the chansa. A pattern of timber planks, all joined without nails, are installed on the floor on a single layer. In some cases, certain strips of the floor might be higher to indicate different sitting areas within the chansa.

During summer months family members, in particular children, sleep on the outdoor terrace. In winter, life shifted indoors and the family slept all together in the chansa whether on rugs or on small mattresses or directly on the floor. The residual heat from the fireplace, as well as the body heat of the family members, kept the room warmer. Until 30 years ago, in some houses, pieces of cloth were hung from the chansa beams to create thin partitions for every person sleeping in the room. The only activity that is usually not done on the floor is cooking with western stoves. Gas stoves are generally laid on a piece of

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Fireplace room in the Pakkar house in Igu

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furniture, on a side of the chansa. The difference between the usual cooking on the floor and the use of gas stove becomes spatially evident when people gather in the chansa. When one person cooks, standing by the stove with the cooking pots, all the other family members are sitting on the floor, chopping food, drinking tea and chatting.

The chansa is characterised by a particular spatial organization that defines its parts. This division is partly recognizable even today. The fireplace and main pillar mark an axis that virtually divides the chansa into two parts. As noted by Dollfus this axis separates the area for cooking and food storage from the ‘living room’ area17. The area dedicated to women, next to the fireplace, is called thapma18. The cooking area is the women’s domain, a darker and more intimate area allowed to other women and very close members of the family. The other part, brighter and against the external wall, is the men’s domain, where guests are received and entertained19. This side of the fireplace is the area dedicated to social relationships, where the elderly and the guests generally sit in a line along the wall. For a guest, to be offered a seat in this area corresponds to a sign of respect and honour20. Guests are always honoured with a warmer seat closer to the fireplace, notwithstanding the season. Through spatial organisation and sitting positions, an ‘order’ is created in the chansa according to guests’ and household members’ age and social status. In every celebration (even in tents for important events) sitting position is regulated by the same principle of order according to a linear disposition. The line of sitting people: tral (gral) (that can continue from a straight line to an ‘L’ shape) has at its head the most important members and the first seat in this line it is reserved for the most respected person in the meeting. This seat is called tralgo (gral-mgo), meaning onset of the line21. At the end of the tral is the seat closest to the entrance door. This is the least important seat, known as khyimjuk (khyim-mjug) the ‘house end’, or traljuk (gralmjug) the end of the sitting line. In general, the eldest family member occupies what is considered to be the most important seat, the closest to the fireplace: the thapstag22. The low tables, choktse (cog-tse), placed in front of the guest seats also embody the hierarchy of the sitting order. Choktse are higher the more important the guest, decreasing in height towards the guests at the end of the tral. Therefore, the people’s spatial disposition and the objects, including the wooden floor in the chansa, represent the social status, even if these rules are not always applied strictly by everyone, especially today.

It is interesting to notice that the subdivision into two areas in a chansa has assumed a clear form today.

Not many single rooms for both cooking and entertaining social relationships are used anymore. Often houses have a smaller and separate kitchen where women cook and informal meals are eaten. Another room, bigger and brighter, is reserved for guests to sit, chat or eat. In this way, what was formerly a virtual division in a single room has become a concrete one. The family does not use only the chansa to spend Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 133.

Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 147.

19 Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 133.

20 Ibidem.

21 Ibidem.

22 Interview: Abdul Ghani Sheikh.

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the night since nowadays it is common to have separate sleeping rooms. Interestingly Rieger Jandl noted that the subdivision of the chansa into two areas is creating, in some houses, a sort of ‘fake kitchen’23. The actual cooking activity is not taking place in the room furnished with shelves and fireplace.

In this way, what is called chansa becomes only a sitting room, losing many of its previous functions, while maintaining its characteristics and representative elements as a space for social relationships.

Storage Rooms Food, fodder and fuel are necessary resources that every family needs to store inside the house. The house becomes a depository for everything needed during the year and particularly during winter months. The larger the household the more rooms are specifically used to store all the kinds of goods.

Certain storage rooms can be found in almost every house while some others are exclusive to wealthier families. These storage rooms are: • Storeroom/larder: dzot (mdzod) • Chang fermentation room: changkhang (chang-khang) • Cereals storage: bangkhang (bang-khang) • Fodder storage: pugraks (phug-rags) • Dry dung storage: lchekhang (lci-khang) • Cold room and butter room: silkahng (bsil-khang) and markhang (mar-khang) • Wood storage: shingkhang (shing-khang) The dzot (storeroom/larder) is used to store food of different kinds. This is functionally positioned in a room that has direct access from the chansa. The door to the larder is very close to the woman’s sitting position next to the fireplace. Large wooden box-like containers: phergam (phe-sgam) are used to store cereal flour, and small shelves might be installed. The dzot is a room reserved to the family, an intimate space where strangers are generally not allowed. In certain storeroom there can be a lubang24 that is placed there to ensure prosperity for the family. A storeroom is found in every house in Ladakh.

The changkhang is the room specifically conceived to ferment and store chang, a typical Ladakhi short-fermentation barley drink. This room has a very practical function, and its microclimate and position have to foster good fermentation for the drink and its maintenance. Inside the changkhang there are large containers made of wood (plastic is more common nowadays) where chang is fermented, sometimes surrounded with hay, that keeps a constant temperature around the barrel. This room has a typical direct access from the chansa so that chang can be served to guests without moving to other rooms. The changkhang is a very important room for the household that is sometimes present in both winter and summer quarters.

Rieger Jandl, Architecture… cit., p. 265.

Abode of a local serpent spirit associated to water. A small construction which can be found in houses on the rooftop, inside the storeroom or in the foundations for the wellbeing of the family.

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The bankhang is a room used to store cereals and mainly barley grains. This room has from one to several silos in the floor covered with hatches. Not every household has a special room dedicated to grain storage; therefore in certain chansa hatches conceal grain silos. Similarly to what is done in the chansa, barley can also be tied around the pillar inside the bankhang to ensure a good harvest.

The pugraks is a room where hay and straw are stored. Generally the room is found on the ground floor, so that it is easier to distribute fodder to animals. In wealthier houses, because of the large number of animals to be fed, the room can also occupy more than a floor and fodder is piled almost to the ceiling25.

Hay and straw are first dried out on the rooftop or outside and accumulated in the pugraks when desiccated. The shape of this room does not need to be regular because only fodder has to be kept, therefore pugraks is in many cases adapted to the ground irregularity or to the other rooms’ conformation. The important criterion is to have sufficient space to store the right amount of hay and straw for the whole winter.

The lchekhang is a room used to store dried animal dung to be used as fuel. This room can be found in different parts of the house. In some cases, when dung is dried on the rooftop, the room is at the same level to facilitate its transport. On a rooftop it may be next to a toilet, but it is always kept aside and concealed from the prayer room.

The silkhang is a special room that was not included in the majority of households. It could be on the ground floor in a corner and used to store dairy products. Water channels were cut in the corner of the room and covered by stones so that the room could be kept cool during the summer26. Markhang is a room only used to store butter and it is generally found in rich households, since the wealth of a family used to be proportional to the use of butter the household made27.

Guest Room and Rapsal Room Houses usually have a room to receive guests, a large room that is kept for special occasions and kept clean and tidy all the time. The guest room is known as dronkhang (mgron-khang). The family does not use this room and most of the time it is left empty28. The room is always kept extremely clean and ready to host a guest who might show up at any moment; this is one of the reasons why other rooms in the house can be locked29. The dronkhang represents in the form of a room the way a family honours its guests, since it is kept only for special occasions and for hosting visitors. For this reason the room should be large enough to host as many people as the family can afford, and should be decorated accordingly.

The room might serve as a sleeping room for the guests as well. However, guests can be hosted inside the chansa too, and to sleep together with the family is frequent. It is very different to be received in the Powell, Tibetan… cit., p. 56.

Legacy… vol. 1… cit., p. XIII. 27 Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 146.

28 Rieger Jandl, Architecture… cit., p. 268.

29 Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 145.

25 26

previous page Storeroom of the Doks Abapa house in Mulbekh

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Rapsal in the Tunglungpa House

chansa or in the dronkhang. Being received in the dronkhang is a formal act towards the visitor, while being in the chansa, especially in the part where people are cooking, shows a certain level of informality or intimacy with the family.

The rapsal room gets its name from the balcony characterizing this space, known as rapsal (rab-gsal). A rapsal is a cantilevered wooden structure on poplar beams projecting outside the wall with a large window and wooden frame. It is built so that in some cases a small terraced strip of approximately 50cm forms a small platform on the outside. A rapsal is always annexed to a room. The rapsal and the rapsal room are not found in every household, and in the past they were the prerogative of the king or of wealthier familiesâ&#x20AC;Ś The large amount of wood used for the construction of a rapsal and the large openings were not something most people could afford in the past. The large window behind the balcony is there to bring the maximum sun radiation into the room. For this reason a rapsal room is better oriented towards south or east. In the past there was no glass, therefore rapsal used to have wooden panels to close the openings during the night or when the room was not used. The rapsal room is meant to

honour guests, and similarly to the dronkhang it represents at the same time the family status. For the same reason it is generally provided with one or more pillars. Considered the most formal space to receive visitors, this room can also be decorated with mural paintings and wooden elements are richly carved as well. The rapsal room is usually at the first or second floor. In an old house, a rapsal room is one of the brighter spaces because it was not used for the daily life, therefore it could be provided with large openings; not convenient throughout the year and day.

Sunroom and Glass-room In sunny days the radiation in Ladakh is very strong and, even in winter, direct sunlight is used to keep the people warm. Certain households are provided with a special room on the rooftop, conceived exclusively for the family to sit and enjoy sun throughout the year. The sunroom, nyimalakhang (?)30, has a large wooden frame opening on the southern side. The sunroom has the only purpose to catch the sunlight during the day, especially in winter. The sunroom is also considered to be a luxurious space for wealthier families that can afford to build extra space, also having a large wooden opening with decorations. An advantage of having such a room is that, through the exposure to direct sunlight but protection from the wind, the body can get enough heat during cold months.

A new room with similar function has replaced the sunroom, which today, is not used anymore. The 30

Interview: Abdul Ghani Sheikh.

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Rapsal in an abandoned house in the Leh old town

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Nyimalakhang in the Takshospa house in Nyemu

so-called shelkhang (shel-khang) (glass-room) is a room usually facing southeast, with large glass surfaces that are often built on a house corner. The glass-room, apart from becoming warm when hit by the sun, is used to receive guests. The prototype of today shelkhang was the chhongtse (chong-tse). The term chhongtse refers specifically to a large opening with a thick wooden frame, closed with wooden panels or latticeworks, usually placed on a house corner, and made to serve a single room. The chhongtse with its annexed room, shelkhang, and nymalakhang, are architectural spaces built as a status symbol. This is clear when the glass-room is built with an inappropriate orientation, without taking advantage of the sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s radiation, but placed in the more visible position for the passers by. The use of glass-rooms is not totally convenient in winter since glass cannot prevent the heat loss and the room gets cold very easily.

Families use different strategies to make these rooms warmer. One method is to cover the windows with polyethylene foils to prevent wind from coming in. Then a small stove is installed to heat up the space.

constituent parts of the house

Toilet The toilet in Ladakh covers two essential functions: a sanitary one and the one of accumulating and storing what is transformed into necessary manure for the land. This is achieved without the use of water, which is an important feature in a semi-desert region. The toilet is informally referred to as chhagra (phyag-ra) (mostly but not everywhere in Ladakh), the word dechot (bde-sbyod) is a more polite variant, while the word sangchot (gsang-sbyod) is the more formal one. The toilet is always made of two rooms.

One is above the other so that the lower room is only used to collect the night soil. The lower chamber is on the ground floor, even if the upper room is on the second storey. This pit is always on one of the external walls so that an opening is provided so that the room can be emptied from the outside. The opening used to empty the pit is covered with stones and opened just few times in a year: when the content is ready to be used as fertilizer. The toilet is commonly built inside the house (typical of all old houses), so that in winter there is no need to leave the building and elderly people can reach it more easily. In recent times toilets are often moved outside, becoming an independent construction with a staircase. The toilet upper room is also provided with a pile of loose earth to be shovelled down the pit after every use to prevent returning smell. The upper room is ventilated through a window while the lower one has no openings, to allow the excrement to decompose. Because of the dry climate, this system has proved successful and even necessary because animal dung could not just be used as manure since it is an important fuel.

Nowadays, public toilets are built with the overlapped chamber arrangement, but made out of concrete. The shift from the local materials, and the fact that ashes and loose earth are not used inside the toilet, creates a hygienic issue and the impossibility of preventing smells. This factor has to be examined because it highlights the importance of considering spatial arrangement together with the most proper materials for the implementation of any architectural solution. Another recent issue concerning toilets is related to tourists. Tourists, both Indian and foreigners, demand flush toilets, which are not suitable in Ladakh for many reasons. First of all the scarcity of water and the lack of any sewage system would damage the environment. Moreover, the low winter temperatures would freeze the water pipes, making the use of this toilet impossible during winter. The introduction of different kinds of flush toilets have influenced locals a lot and in many cases toilets are now seen as filthy places, to be kept outside the house. This is an unfortunate consequence of the spreading of pre-established ideas towards dry toilets, a way of managing waste that was in perfect balance with the environment and daily life, and that nowadays is not properly understood, implemented or developed.

At this point it is worth discussing the topic of bathrooms. The bathroom was not a room commonly conceived in the planning of the Ladakhi houses. That is why the English word â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bathroomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is nowadays used to define a space used for washing. In the past, only in very few wealthy households would have

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The courtyard of a house in Kanji

a room with water buckets leading to a small washing room31. This room is called trhuskhang (khruskhang) and it is a formal way to refer to the washing room. The scarce amount of water available does not allow the use of a system that implies a great quantity of water to be wasted or canalised in pipes.

It is a common habit for everyone in villages to wash outdoors during summer, near a water source or in the house courtyard using just a small amount of water. It is also common for locals to wash hands and teeth where kitchenware is washed too: in a corridor near the main gate or outside the threshold at the entrance, or in some cases under the porch outside the chansa. A bucket full of water in the chansa used to be the only facility for the more modest families.

Sleeping Room The sleeping room is not a constant feature in old dwellings. If there is a sleeping room this is reserved mainly for guests or it can be set aside for an important member of the family or for the eldest son32.

One of the facts that demonstrates that the sleeping room was not common is that there is no original expression to define it and people might use the definition nyit tangsa (gnyid btang-sa) (the place where somebody sleeps) simply to describe a room used for this purpose, and Ladakhis generally use the English word ‘bedroom’ today33. Another noticeable fact is that people never used beds as they were sleeping on rugs, cushions, or simply on the floor. A sleeping room is likely to be close to the fireplace room on the first floor, or in some cases on the second floor around the central court. Nowadays, the functions once united in the fireplace room are getting more and more separated. The separation and Ibidem.

Powell, Tibetan… cit., p. 58.

33 Rieger Jandl, Architecture… cit., p. 269.

31 32

the increased number of sleeping rooms is therefore a recent feature in Ladakhi houses. A family might have two or three sleeping rooms in order to separate the elder and the grown up children. In recent times it is more common to see houses furnished with beds and chairs. Beds are usually bought to host foreigners, especially in guesthouses, while locals are in many cases sleeping on mattresses directly on the floor.

Terraced Roofs and Verandas Rooftops in Ladakh are flat, a typical feature of semi-desert and desert regions, where precipitation is scarce. The upper level of the houses might be a simple flat terrace, even if in many houses the terrace is also covered by verandas. These are known in Ladakhi as yaps (gyabs). If a two-storey house is above the ground floor it is at this level that verandas enclose one or more spaces. Terraces with verandas are used for many purposes since they considerably expand the surface of a household. Especially in winter, when the ground is covered with snow in many areas, rooftops are the only flat surface that can be used for outdoor activities. While using the terraced roofs people keep them clean, brushing away the snow which is necessary to avoid roof damage.

The yaps are backed by a mud bricks wall and covered with wooden rafters supported by posts. Verandas are made for people to carry out any activity, protecting them from direct sun radiation or cold winds. The yaps are also used to store and protect objects and food. Vegetables and fruits are common-

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Yaps of the Pakkhar house in Igu

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Yaps in the Tompo house in Hemis Shukpachan

constituent parts of the house

ly dried and kept on the terrace until ready to be placed in a storage room. Moreover, the rooftop parapets are used to stack hay, straw and animal dung when drying. People spin wool or roast barley under the yaps and many objects are hung from the roof. Usually protected underneath the verandas, are the rooms on the upper floor: the prayer room, the sunroom, the sleeping/guest room, the storage spaces, the summer kitchen and even the toilets. On the upper level of a house there is always an open area left for the smoke outlets. The thokskar (roof-window) are always present on the roof and they are encircled with a mud brick or wooden parapet. On one side of the terraced roof there might be a wall with a door.

This door is made to facilitate the lifting of hay or straw from the ground floor to the rooftop without bringing heavy loads inside. On the very top of a roof there might be a lubang for the household prosperity. Prayer flags: tarchok (dar-lcog) are attached to strings all around the terraced roof, tied to wooden sticks: tarshing (dar-shing) coming out from cubic construction on the roof edges: tarbang (dar-bang).

Prayer Room The prayer room is a peculiarity of Ladakh houses and it is known as chhotkhang (mchod-khang) which means ‘offering room’. Every Buddhist family that can afford the construction of a chhotkhang would build one on the uppermost part of the house, towards the highest and purest area. It is considered disrespectful and inauspicious to step over the roof of a prayer room and in general to direct the feet towards the image of a god even when sitting or lying. The chhotkhang is usually built on the last storey, north or west oriented. The prayer room is not built south facing and in no circumstances should it be built falling under the path of the six-star constellation minduk, which crosses the night sky in the months of October/November, as this is considered inauspicious34.

In case a household cannot afford to build a chhotkhang, images and/or statues of deities and sacred texts can be placed in a corner of the chansa but cult objects are always placed on a table, in order to be elevated from the ground. The chhotkhang, because of its religious importance, is the most decorated room of a household. In certain houses, the prayer room has wall paintings and several painted scrolls hanging from the walls. Scrolls, thangka (thang-ka) are usually covered with a piece of cloth in order not to expose the represented deity to everyone’s sight. The wooden structural elements (rafters and pillars) are richly carved and sometimes painted in different colours. Statues of deities and sacred texts are placed inside a wooden chest which can also be carved and colourfully painted. Paintings in a chhotkhang do not only have a decoration function, but they are mainly religious symbols. This description

by P. Murdoch shows how much symbolic and spatial features are connected in a chhotkhang35: The detail of moulding, carving, and the use of more wood of a refined dimension and line create a decorated effect which is consciously more elaborate than the rest of the house. […] The room scale is intimate enough to be freer than the rooms below. The space is light, colourful, decorated, and solitary with a feeling of a place close to the sun and sky. The highest level becomes associated with the gods spatially as well as symbolically.

34 35

Legacy… vol. 1… cit., p. XIII. Murdoch, Vernacular… cit., p. 238.

previous page The rooftop door to lift hay in the Gongmakun house in Hemis Shukpachan

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Chhotkhang of the Kakapa house in Kanji (left) Abandoned chhotkhang of the Janjan house in Igu (right)

The chhotkhang is used daily by the family to give offerings in different forms. Pure water in seven cups is brought in the morning or oil lamps are lit. Since lamps are constantly lit this made the room surfaces turn dark in the past. For this reason it is nowadays common to see that glass boxes are installed with chimneys in order to avoid damages to the surfaces; these boxes can also be seen in monasteries. The room should accommodate monks sitting along the room sides to perform rituals in special occasions.

On one or two sides of the prayer room there are low tables for the monks to sit and read. In the room there are also musical instruments and ritual objects used by the monks. The monks performing rituals are usually hosted in the house for the whole time they need; for this reason, the capacity of the prayer room is another indicator of family wealth. As reported by R. Powell36: This room is where the family ensures its prosperity and well-being through contact with the deities considered to be actually manifest in the sacred images. Much of the family’s surplus will be expended on the maintenance and enriching of their prayer room, and on costly performances of the required rituals.

next pages Stairs in the Doks Abapa house in Mulbekh

A passage around the chhotkhang can be built to perform a clockwise walk called skora (skor-ba): the circumambulation is generally done around any sacred object. This passage is called skorlam (skorlam). A skorlam can be included in the house volume, a sort of narrow and dark corridor, while in other cases it might be formed by a balcony projecting on the house façade.

The prayer room is generally associated only with Buddhist households. However, there is a particular prayer room in Leh, in the Muslim household known as Lobdingpa. In this important house a room 36

Powell, Tibetan… cit., p. 58.

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Distribution space at the groundfloor in the Latsas house in Sumur

is partitioned in two areas: at the entrance there is a space with central pillar, while a wooden partition with typical lattice works enshrines a more private area reserved for praying. This smaller area is long and narrow and it has a mirhab included in the wall thickness on one end. The mirhab, indicating the Mecca direction, is meant to give the room a special praying function, allowing many people to pray in a line towards the mirhab. The room is situated on the first floor of the house.

Connecting Spaces, House Entrances and Gardens The connecting spaces in houses used to be kept to a minimum. Their shape and dimension are not fixed and they depend on the position of the other rooms around them and their vertical connections.

If the main connecting space is on the first floor, this would give access to the chansa, the toilet, the sleeping/guest rooms and the rapsal room on the same level (horizontally), linking the main living area to the ground floor and second floor (vertically). Sometimes an outer staircase may lead to the main door at the first floor that is linked to the main connecting space. The entrance to the first floor is considered to be the main house gate and the door is typically larger and more decorated than any other.

constituent parts of the house

Through the main gate it is possible to enter a corridor that, in some cases, leads to an open court on the first floor which might be used for washing during the warm season37. This connection space is often open towards the terrace and the ladder to access the roof is not covered. The open passage is therefore always ventilated.

Before thirty to fifty years ago the main entrance was on the ground floor. From the stables a staircase would have connected the ground floor to the first floor. In this way a single main gate was needed.

In the connecting space of the main living quarters a wooden stick can hang from the ceiling to put clothes on. On the second floor, the terrace with the verandas also works as a connecting space around which all the upper rooms are arranged. As found in Nubra, sometimes houses have a small garden nearby. This area is called chulda (?) and here grass is cut at a certain point of the year and used to feed animals. The garden, generally with trees, is used as a summer place for resting and it often has a small water course passing through it.

House as a Microcosm: The Symbolism of the House and its Protective Systems The house, in particular a dwelling meant to serve an agrarian life-style, is above all a functional construction. But every building has, to a certain extent, an aesthetic connotation ingeniously integrated to the practical necessities. However, a house can also symbolize more subtle meanings through its physical features, besides from functionality and aesthetics. In Ladakh, the house as a whole, often represents through its spatial organization, the universal order, becoming in this way a microcosm38. It is interesting to quote Tucci for this purpose, using his words39: In the West to construct means to imagine and to enrich the work of nature with un-considered creations of the imagination. Only music means to re-live cosmic life and it is an immediate participation in the eternal course of things. For the Tibetans instead, to build — and I speak of course of religious art — means to re-do the world.

It seems that, even in houses and not only in religious buildings, the world is re-constructed, and materialized to serve the purpose of organizing the household in its parts. Every house could be considered a ‘sacred’ space, not around or beyond the threshold of a prayer room, but in its whole dimension, which integrates not only the material sphere of a family life. In the Tibetan conception, the world is subdivided into a vertical hierarchy made of three levels, the same which can be ‘read’ in the house structure40: • The ground floor as the lower level, inhabited by animals, associated with black and blue colours and with the subsoil and slithering creatures; Murdoch, Vernacular… cit., p. 233-234.

Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 131.

39 G. Tucci, Indo-Tibetica IV. 1. Gyantse and its Monasteries Part 1. General Description of the Temples, New Delhi 1989, p. 11.

40 Murdoch, Vernacular… cit., p. 228.

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constituent parts of the house

Storey

Realm

Main functions

Second floor

Gods level

Prayer room, guest rooms, verandas

First floor

Humans level

Fireplace room, storage rooms, toilet

Ground floor

Animals level

Stables, winter room, fodder storage

• The first floor as the middle level, inhabited by humans, associated with the earth, human beings, and other beings;

•

Scheme of the House Levels and Functions

• The second floor as the highest level, associated to the deities and gods, the purest level; Nevertheless, the symbolism cannot be strictly applied when looking at every house. There is always a certain degree of practicality to be considered when analysing structures that have a strong functional connotation. Sometimes an interpretation should be given to every specific case study. For example, if a house has two storeys and no prayer room, it is common for the chansa to have a small altar dedicated to deities and this is normally placed on a higher position than the people’s seats. In this way the same meaning is conveyed but not through the exact same physical correspondence of the three house levels. In Ladakh, this way of conceiving the world is not only reflected in the built environment, but in the natural one too.

According to what has been explained by locals, the quality of a house is not only linked to its physical construction. In Diskit, an important and ancient house, a zimskhang, was considered very blessed for the sacred statues located in its prayer room. Eventually the statues had to be moved to another building and, from that moment on, the locals considered that the loss of sacred statues caused the house to decay rapidly. From that moment onwards most of the floors collapsed and nowadays just a small portion of the main façade is still standing. The house can also have protective systems specifically positioned in and around it, which are not against physical agents but are used to prevent the house from being harmed by spirits or evil forces. There are different forms of protection according to the different beings and forces the household should be protected from. These protective systems correspond to various charms which can still be seen in many houses. Charms are not always present in all their forms and in some places only certain typologies are still used today. On the external walls, put in specifically calculated positions, there are three-dimensional charms known as sasgo (sa-sgo) and namsgo (gnamsgo) respectively meaning earth door and sky door.

These elaborate constructions made of different materials are supposed to prevent bad influences caused by beings residing in the earth or sky. The astrologer is in charge of preparing these protection systems and to decide where to install them. The two charms are different and the sasgo is recognizable because it has a sheep skull at the centre of its composition, while the namsgo has a dog skull. These animals are considered vehicles respectively associated to earth and sky. These objects belong to the cat-

previous page The protectors of the three families (rigs-gsum-mgon-po) on the entrance of the Takshospa house in Nyemu

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egory of items called dos (mdos) fabricated by astrologers41. Printed charms are often seen on top of the doorframes and they are known as door watchers: goshrungs (sgo-srungs). Printed charms are generally prepared by monks or astrologers and they contain both symbolic depictions and texts. The graphic representations are often actions performed for protection in an invisible world. For example, the scorpion that is meant to prevent diseases has four types of demons pinned beneath his body: the king and queen demon, a tsan (btsan)42 and a lu43. Again, on the outer walls, a red pigment called tsak (btsag) is used to depict symbols of protection and to colour special stones to be placed around the house. The drawn charms are painted above the stables level on the ground floor, to prevent attacks by the tsan.

The painting can be a dotted continuous line with other defensive symbols like crossed swords, different types of guns and swastikas. On the wall corners large red triangles reinforce this protective system44. A conical red dyed stone or red dyed brick called tsandos (btsan-mdos), is meant to have the same protective role against these spirits45. Tsandos are generally found on the rooftop of houses, or on top of fencing walls around the household property, especially close to the gate. There is sometimes a phallic symbol hanging from the rooftop. This is hung to protect recently built houses from envious people’s or spirits’ sights; in fact, according to local traditions, these malevolent effects could damage the family next pages Sasgo on a house wall in Sakti

and the phallic symbol is placed there so that those who look at the building would feel the urge to look elsewhere, without affecting the household46.

Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 136.

The tsan is a spirit that could be malevolent with a normal appearance from the front of his body, but which has all guts visible from the back.

43 Powell, Tibetan… cit., p. 62.

44 Dollfus, Lieu… cit., p. 136.

45 Ibidem.

46 Ivi, p. 137.

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house construction technology

House Construction Technology

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house construction technology

Ladakhi houses are simple yet sophisticated structures refined through centuries. Thick masonry walls provide structural stability and insulation while the scarce wood is employed for posts, beams and window frames. Mud is the omnipresent binding material, as a part of unburned bricks, rammed earth and it is the finishing for both vertical and horizontal surfaces. Any construction made with these materials can perish quickly if not properly maintained, even if dry climate and scarce rainfall in Ladakh permit a better conservation of buildings as compared to other regions. Through a system of communal obligations, houses were constructed using virtually free labour before the introduction of money, and were made out of basically free material: as a result, every family had houses that had been carefully built and that were qualitatively better1. The construction of the house is influenced by the place, but not only because of the availability of materials. Masons, rtsikspon, might be specialised in one particular construction technique — e.g. stoneworks — and each worker’s personal experience might differ much from village to village. Every hamlet had mainly, or totally, to rely on local masons and carpenters because imported labour used to be more difficult to find. Very often masons also had to work wood when carpenters were not available.

This chapter analyses the local materials such as earth, stone and wood and considers new materials and techniques which often replace the local ones today. This study aims at making a comparison to understand whenever a consolidated tradition evolved or was interrupted. Thanks to the interviews it has been possible to understand that the general construction criteria always have exceptions. It has to be underlined again, before investigating the construction techniques, that no general rule can always be valid. Practicality and adaptation to specific needs is a typical feature of the region, which can be seen specifically in the approach to house construction. This work is not meant to be an exhaustive documentation of all regional variations, nor a compilation of rules that are always accepted. Recently, houses have become less a personal expression of care and learned skill and more a product which needs to be paid for. This is what has drastically changed in the last century, especially in building houses. A more intense and faster construction activity is taking place today, an unprecedented phenomena that, at this scale, has never been experienced before in Ladakh.

1 C. Jest, J.A. Stein, Dynamics of Development and Tradition. The Architecture of Ladakh and Bhutan, Colloques Internationaux du C.N.R.S., n. 268, Ecologie et Geologie de l’Himalaya, Paris 1977, p. 345.

previous page The making of a capital

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Main Phases of the Construction Process The construction process is listed here in its essential phases. Buildings are not often completed in a single season but a family can add new parts to the house according to its specific needs. The phases explained below can be seen as one of the parts of a process that not only considers the building of a single house, but which includes its constant renovation or the addition of new parts.

• Collection of materials, site selection and discussion with the master mason; • Digging and laying foundations or wall basement; • Erection of superstructures with openings and lintels; • Placement of pillars, primary and secondary beams and completion of floors for each storey; • Fitting of widows and doors; • Finishing with plaster and decorations.

Before the introduction of a market economy, in the 20th century, materials were collected before the construction could start. This operation could have taken several seasons. The site selection and the beginning of construction used to be (and still are in many villages) crucial moments for determining the future prosperity of a house. This phase has to be considered of the utmost importance. Before the house construction starts, the right moment and place should be established, taking into account astrological calculations for a best implementation of the house within the surroundings. The right day and time are calculated and indicated to the family by the astrologer. These dates are selected according to

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Scheme of the construction process

the Tibetan calendar and, apart from general prescribed dates which are always considered good, every single case should be studied in particular. There are many ritual variants at the beginning of the building process and only some of them are described here.

Rituals at the Beginning of the Construction / Soil Evaluation Only after the astrologer has been consulted, is it clear whether the site is suitable or not for house building. In some cases the site has to be changed or a monk is asked to intervene with prescribed rituals. When a site is also a lusa (klu-sa) (place of a serpent deity) the monk should perform a ritual to make the spirit accept the construction2. At the beginning of the construction a rite called sapshiok can be carried out by monks, when digging starts3. When digging is needed, it is important to understand the position of the earth spirit called sadak (sa-bdag) in order not to harm it — in this way it will not cause any harm later. In another practice the astrologer draws a bow and arrow on the ground. Where arrow and bow string cross, a small hole is dug into the ground for a soil test. The earth that was removed at first is then put back into the hole. When the earth refills the hole completely it means that the soil is suitable to bear walls. If all the soil is not enough to refill the hole, it means that the ground is

2 3

Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 136.

Interview: Tundup Paljor Gonpapa Khangbu.

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A mason explaining the drawings made on the ground by the onpo

not compact and resistant, and this will cause the house structure to crack. Another practical test on the soil nature is the water test4.

In this test a pit is dug and filled with water. After leaving it for some time, water level is checked. If the pit retains water, it is good and if the water level decreases, the ground is not good for foundation. This simple test shows that if water is absorbed, the soil is sandy and loose. When water level remains same, the soil is firm and provides excellent load bearing capacity.

These tests show how both practical and ritualistic aspects are used at the beginning of a house con4

Borah, Conservationâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 25.

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struction and how these overlap. After the site has been selected and all the necessary precaution measures carried out, the owner starts the dialogue with the rtsikspon. There was no architect or similar professional in Ladakh and the site ground was the drawing board on which the mason determined the main features of the ground floor and bearing walls, while the size of the rooms is discussed directly with the family members. Even today many people rely on rtsikspon to build their houses, and architects are not common figures. Sometimes, especially for large buildings, engineers are asked to take care of the design. Houses are mostly built without using a drawing, relying only on the craftsmen’s skill and experience. Mainly in the past, the astrologer could understand through his calculations which phases of the construction have to be carried out and when. According to the astrologer’s calculation the construction of a house can begin in a certain period, but continue in other years. Therefore, a house can be built in different seasons not only because of the materials gathering, but also for the precautions taken based on the astrologer’s interpretations.

Foundations Many constructions on the mountains in Ladakh rise without foundations as if they were suspended on the rocks. When it comes to the legends on the construction of a monastery or fort, it is common to hear that the structures were built by non-human creatures only during a night. Entire villages lay sometimes on steep mountainsides slopes, as if they were put there by a spell. According to the site, the walls can be built with or without foundations. Walls adapt to the bare rock surfaces without the need for any foundation on the mountains, while on softer ground and in the plain areas near the fields, a trench is always dug to erect the plinth.

Houses Built Without Foundations The great ability of the Ladakhi masons can be recognized in their capacity to erect stone walls directly from the rocky mountain sides without needing foundations, more than in the construction of the walls themselves5. These constructions need to have an adaptive basement so that walls can rise from an irregular and sloped surface. In this case smaller stones, if compared to those used in trenched foundations, are used at the base. In this way a tight connection is created and the basement (made out of small stones) is shaped on the rocky surface. In the past, when construction tools were scarcely available, there were severe limits to excavation or rock levelling and this was certainly a main factor influencing the building of houses with no foundations. This type of basement was used to level the ground on which the house and its rooms were built. As noted by R. Powell6:

5 6

Devers, Les Fortifications… cit., p. 85.

Powell, Tibetan… cit., p. 60.

previous page Stone plinths of a house in Igu

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Very often houses are sited on the valley walls or on rocky outcrops so as to avoid using precious agricultural land. Where that happens the plan of the house may be largely dictated by the form of the site. Large boulders may need to be built around, and where the rock surface is too steep to build on directly, that area must be spanned with a timber beam. In these situations the buildings take on an organic articulation reflecting the skill and imagination of Ladakhi builders and the drama of their environment. next pages Satse pa gongma house rising directly on the bare stone

Houses Built With Foundations Foundations are always made of stone and raised up to the plinth level. They are known by a variety of names: mang (rmang), magdan (rmang-gdan), rtsikmang (rtsig-rmang). Foundations can form a small plinth of only few centimetres or include the whole ground floor. Recycling is also applied to foundations, and many houses are built on a base that belonged to a former house lying in ruins7. The plinth height can also be different according to the ground slope. When a house is on flat land, the plinth can be lower as compared to constructions on steep ground. It is only when foundations are built on sloped terrain that the lower floor is constituted of wooden joists resting on foundation walls8. Timber floors are very expensive and are used only when the ground cannot be levelled only with stones. The plinth is often wider than the wall to ensure more stability to the masonry; a larger base is useful to partly prevent the wall from bending9. The plinth is known as kursi (a Hindi word meaning chair) and, according to some masons, a stronger wall base is given with a minimum of 1,5ft (45cm) plinth height10. The stone employed for foundations is selected according to size and shape, and it used to be assembled utilizing undressed pieces. As opposed to buildings without foundations, which are erected by starting with small stones to better adapt to the ground, walls with foundations are stronger when laid first with larger stones that decrease in size as the wall becomes higher. Some masons believe that undressed stones facilitate the interlocking elements, creating a stronger wall. This is true if the stones are properly selected and positioned so that each element is assembled coherently with those around, avoiding large gaps and ensuring that larger elements are placed at the bottom11. Nevertheless it is rare to see foundations rising from the ground with larger stones that gradually decrease in size, because stone is heavy to be hand-carried (even for short distances). This is why many constructions (especially boundary walls) are mainly made of smaller river stone that is readily available and easier to be carried. However, masons know that round stones are not structurally efficient. Flat and larger stones are preferred but in the past they were mostly heavy and luxurious items.

Before digging a trench, the mason draws the building plan of the supporting walls on the ground using a thread on the pre-established construction area; the thread was measured in cubits: trhu units12.

7 F. Pommaret Imaeda, The construction of Ladakhi Houses in the Indus Valley, Proceedings of the Conference: Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson (Oxford, 1979), M. Aris, Aung San Suu Kyi (eds.), Warminister 1980, p. 249.

8 Khosla, Buddhistâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 116.

9 Interview: Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa.

10 Interview: Tundup Paljor Gonpapa Khangbu.

11 Interview: Tundup Namgyal Manepa.

12 Interview: Tundup Paljor Gonpapa Khangbu.

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North walls of the Pakkar house in Igu

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Wall

Very simple tools were used in the past to dig a trench; wooden planks were used to lever large stones

Foundation

that were impeding the proper digging13. In other cases the stones on the site were incorporated in the

Soft soil

wall foundations, and in this way the walls adapted to the ground. At the very beginning it is important

Hard soil rocky or bare soil

Scheme of foundations

to check the soil quality to understand how deep the foundations could go. The soil is evaluated according to what local people call ‘hard soil’ or ‘soft soil’. Hard soil is generally found in areas closer to mountain slopes and it is richer in rocks, while soft soil is found closer to agricultural land, which has little or no stones. The ground floor of some houses might not only have walls but also wooden pillars.

For these vertical supports it is better not to have a stone foundation made of several pieces of stone, because the concentrated loads of the upper structure would easily crack the mud mortar among these pieces, without guaranteeing a proper base for the pillar to rest on. Therefore, the column end should reach directly the deeper layer of hard soil where the stone foundations are also laid. The richer the soil in stones the less necessary to dig, but of course this depends also on each case and this has to be evaluated according to each mason’s experience. If a large amount of stones is already present in the ground when half of the trench has been dug, e.g. 1f (30cm) or 2f (60cm), this is considered a good sign, for the ground is already capable of bearing loads at a shallower level. The trench depth also depends on other factors. It is not convenient to dig too much because the effort would be great and stones would be wasted. Before stones are laid in the trench, the earth below is compressed by flinging down heavy stones several times to make the soil as compact as possible before the construction starts14.

Sometimes, when digging a trench, it is possible to find a silt layer in the ground. In this case the silt bed should be levelled and filled up with stones to create a more solid base15. A considerable presence of silt bed might cause the building to crack if no preliminary intervention is carried out. As a general principle, the size of the stones laid in a trench should be proportional to the width of the trench itself; therefore the larger the trench the bigger the stones16. The foundation width depends on the wall thickness that is anyway smaller than the trench itself. In the past, the foundation width was almost double in size compared to the contemporary ones. As noticed in Hemis Shukpachen, foundations used to be 150cm wide, while today houses have 1,5-2f (45-60cm) foundations. In Nubra, Hunder, Sumur and Kyagar foundations used to be 3f (90cm), while today they have shrunk to 14-24 inches (35-60cm). This shows that the foundations got narrower not only because of the implementation of reinforced concrete structures, but also because the load bearing walls have become less thick as a consequence of the reduction in size of bricks in the whole region. The wall section also shrank because many houses have only a single floor and for this reason a less thick and resistant wall is enough to carry the roof loads.

The presence of water in the soil might damage the stone foundations since stones are bound with mud Interview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

Khosla, Buddhist… cit., p. 117.

15 Interview: Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa.

16 Interview: Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa.

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0

1

2m

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mortar which suffers from water capillarity. Since stone is the only material that can prevent damp from rising, in sites near springs or very close to water courses, foundations are laid without mortar to

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prevent water infiltration. In the past, since the ground floor was used mainly for keeping animals there was no particular way of detaching the ground floor from the soil. The ground was compacted by the weight of the animals moving. Therefore only the walls had a base under the earth. Today, in carefully planned constructions, a hole is dug for the whole building area, and where there are no structural walls the ground is filled up with graded stones to create a foundation. When digging the trench it is considered beneficial (for Buddhists) to symbolically excavate part of the trench using an antelope

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horn17. This is done to keep away lu spirits from the foundations so that they will not interfere with the construction process and then later harm those who will live in the house. When the plinth level is reached, if the construction continues with mud bricks or rammed earth, a flat level is made using extra mortar to fill in all the gaps. In some cases it is possible to place wooden beams inserted horizontally in the wall to equally distribute the loads and avoid cracks in the mortar.

Masonry

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The main load bearing structure is the masonry which also insulates the building with its consistent thickness. The use of columns and beams is limited to the interiors and in general houses have a substantially lower number of timber structural elements as compared to buildings of larger size like temples, monasteries or forts. Walls were often tapering, and their thicker width gave the structure more 6

stability, together with better insulation in the lower storeys. Masonry is essentially constituted of stone and mud, while a few spread-out timber lacings are inserted inside the walls. Rooms are quite small and partition walls are not always used since distances between stone walls are limited. In areas rich in rocks which are suitable for construction, walls are entirely stone-made, though stone is always used for the foundations and plinth of a construction throughout Ladakh. Sun dried mud bricks and rammed earth are employed as mud based materials for walls. Masonry made of mixed techniques are common, and in some buildings all the possible combinations of mud based elements and stone are found. These might be used for the different floors according to the intrinsic resistance of each of the materials. Walls at the base are made of stone, the upper layer of rammed earth and the last storey is brick-made. A wall can be built without using scaffoldings when every storey is erected one after the other18. The masons is in this way allowed to use low supports for raising the wall, as he can work on a wooden plank laid on bricks. With this method walls are always built from within the structure.

Houses are extended during many generations and new needs might force the construction of larger

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Schematic Section Detail | Foundation to Rooftop 1. Parapet / thokrgyang: Earth coping Slate stone / yamangs Mud bricks / pakbu Wooden sticks / tralu 2. Roof / thok: Roof earth / thoksa Shrubs / bilap Wooden sticks / tralu Secondary beam / dungma 3. Mud brick wall one header / skyangtrhom 4. Mud brick wall three header / truktrhom 5. Stone wall

17 18

Interview: Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa.

Pommaret Imaeda, The constructionâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 249.

6. Stone foundations / mang, magdan, rtsikmang

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rooms in the upper storeys. A mismatch of the structural elements is often the result of later additions built above an original structure. New walls are not built so that they overlap with the lower ones, or pillars do not have a lower support. This usually happens when the ground floor was adapted to an irregular terrain. Sometimes lower walls have an irregular plan shape, often with curved walls, while the upper rooms are built with a more regular plan. When a large room is created and new walls have to be erected a series of beams are added to carry the new wallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s load. This usually causes the load of the new wall to be concentrated on smaller surfaces of the lower structure since the new wall rests on a beam that is supported only at two points. For this reason the lower walls crack, since bricks and mud mortar are not suitable to bear an intense and concentrated load. Ideally the loads would need to be distributed over a wider area and not on single points of the lower masonry. Sometimes even pillars rest simply on a floor without any lower support. The missed overlapping of the structural elements often causes large cracks in the masonry or a collapse in the floor that is overloaded by the addition of pillars which have no structural element underneath. Nevertheless, many houses have been modified in this way as it is possible to witness these daring, extreme solutions still today. What is interesting is that these structures often seem made to resist just enough to avoid a collapse of the entire house19.

Stone Walls Stone is a readily available construction material, mainly employed undressed for the construction of load bearing structures. Larger stones were broken into smaller and lighter pieces, to be more easily carried, or to be better adapted to other rocks into the wall courses. But the majority of houses are built making use of stones in the form in which they are originally found. In other cases a house could have been raised making use of large stones present on the site, which were integrated in the ground floor wall because they could not be removed. It is on the mountainsides where the more daring structures are built, and rock becomes an essential part of the house. In this case the mountain itself constitutes the back wall of the dwellings raised on the slopes, which can be seen inside the house. The building is incorporated in the rugged terrain of the mountain, showing the greatest level of adaptation of a house to its surroundings. Nowadays, stone is dressed before use, and often very small elements are cut in order to be placed between concrete frames. In this case stone is used with an aesthetic purpose rather than a structural one. Andrea Rieger Jandl explains a way in which stone was formerly made into regular shapes20: In old times masons used to break the stone directly on the wall to exactly get the size they needed. Also, it The rakupa house in Leh was at the beginning only a stone pen made for the animals to stay in summer. Later the construction was added to with more rooms and when the family made it their summer house a new floor was added. When the house became the main family house new rooms were again added to the first floor. On both the first and second floor certain rooms were built in a different way as compared to the lower structure. The fireplace room on the first floor has two pillars resting only on the stables ceiling. On the rooftop three rectangular rooms were added on an irregular plan with the use of extra beams which are visible from the rooftop since they lift all the rooms and they stick out from the lower walls.

20 Rieger Jandl, Architectureâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 275.

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previous page The construction of a stone masonry in Padum

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was a guarantee for the stability of the wall if they could break the stone on it without damaging the wall itself.

Nowadays stones are all broken on the ground and then lifted up. In former days people used to break the stones more accurately and they then took care that they would fit together without leaving big gaps. Nowadays the shape of the stones is not a big issue anymore and big gaps are simply filled with cement that is poorly mixed.

The construction of stone masonry can be executed with a wide range of quality, since the experience of each single mason is varied, as are the areas in which this technique is employed. In fact, there is Wall with rubble stone infill

nothing more linked to practical experience than the construction of a random rubble stone masonry. Elements are different all the time and their selection requires patience and capacity of improvisation which is only assured by experience. In Ladakh there are well known areas for stone-specialised masons, e.g. in the village of Yuljuk in Kartse or Nubra, where most of the houses are two-storey buildings made out of stone. Most of all, availability of rocks determines the type of elements which are employed for the masonry. In general sedimentary rocks with a flat surface are preferred since their shape helps the laying into courses. Every course, rdotsir (rdo-tshir), can be alternated with larger and more irregular pieces taken directly from the mountains. Assuring this alternation is considered the best way

Wall with through stones

to erect stone walls. In this way it is easier to seek a better interlocking of elements. River stones can also be employed, but normally, since they are rounder and less suitable for being laid into courses, these are used for precinct walls, or for shelters built in the pastureland. Because stone is the material with the higher compressive strength and it is readily available, it is used whenever a family can afford it21.

A stone wall can be erected with or without mortar, but dry stone walls are less common for houses.

In the majority of cases a stone wall is formed by two parallel layers of stone: an internal and external one made of larger stones that are flatter on the outer sides. In between these layers, stone fragments and mortar are placed to fill the gaps. This ‘infill’ technique can be noticed during the construction of new walls as well as the collapsed walls of ruins. In this way a better use of stone elements occurs, but at

Wall alterning slate stones and larger pieces

the same time the wall has less cohesion and it is less resistant in case of an earthquake since inner and outer layers are not interlocked. For this reason layers of through stones are sometimes used to connect

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Stone wall sections

the inner to the outer part of a wall. Through stones are used in certain areas and in Zangskar they are known as ban (?). Through stones should be put at intervals of 2ft (60cm) in every layer and then alternated for every upper layer for a better cohesion of the masonry22. Of course moving large stones is an effort and any wall made with through stones has a limited section width. The larger stones available

next pages Layer of flat stones and larger blocks of the old Kalon house in Mulbekh

should be better placed for building wall corners. In certain houses and other buildings it is possible to see how corner stones are placed slightly tilted towards the upper wall side to obtain a stronger edge.

The corner issue is important when analysing stone masonry. It is difficult to erect precise and straight

21 22

Interview: Konchok Tsering Solpon.

Interview: Mohammad Nizamuddin.

house construction technology

corners, especially with random rubble. As analysed by Devers, before the installation of the first dynasty from Central Tibet (10 -15 centuries) the fortification structures in Ladakh with more than two th

th

storeys were circular or employed roundish corners23. This problem concerned only the oldest periods, and later, a new type of architecture emerged, overcoming previous obstacles and introducing characteristics that were different from previous constructions: such as the increase in the number of storeys, larger interior volumes, and the ability to erect right angles, together with the multiplication of structural or decorative wooden elements24. Earlier higher structures were made using mud bricks or rammed earth in the upper level which are more easily assembled to form right angles. According to this analysis it is possible to draw a comparison with the houses. The difficulty found in erecting straight corners with stone can still be found in domestic architecture. Masons have not always been trained or experienced enough to raise a straight stonewall with regular corners, especially before the mid 20th century. In many of the houses examined during the fieldwork it is possible to notice that especially inner stone corners tend to be roundish. This shows how straight corners are rather displayed on the outside of a construction, while inner parts are made more roughly, in a way that is more congenial and easy for the executor. Thus, for different reasons dwellings with rounded walls are commonly found. Sometime this necessity might be due to an adaptation to the soil, or to a construction among a compound of built houses. In some other cases it is visible that the choice was made because of the mason’s skill, since above a roundish corner, a more straight angle was created with the use of mud bricks.

A more sophisticated use of stone is made using courses which alternate larger to smaller stones creating visible bands of larger elements and smaller ones. This can be achieved using random rubble but only by selecting and disposing every single element with a higher degree of precision. This technique can be employed with or without the use of mud mortar. Small fragments assure slight movements but avoid cracking, which easily occurs when stones are bound with mortar, because of the almost null resistance of the mud. It is possible to notice this technique in the walls of the Leh Palace as well as in other fortified structures and towers in Ladakh. In the study of Devers this technique is taken into account for the analysis of forts, after the research made on fortifications in Ladakh by Neil Howard, in which this technique is named ‘banded texture’. According to Devers there is a complex background to this technique that can be executed in different ways. For this it is necessary to consider the work of André Alexander, in which an evolution of this style has been made, looking the masonry of the buildings in Lhasa starting form the 14th century. Devers points out that the method of laying the stone work courses in Ladakh differs considerably from that in Lhasa, but more similarities are found when observing the lower bastion of the Yumbu Lagang, where the courses are alternated but no vertical joints are made with stone fragments, a characteristic of other types of buildings which are not common in Ladakh25.

Devers, Les Fortifcations… cit., p. 106.

Ivi, p. 107.

25 Ivi, p. 105.

23 24

previous page The making of a stone wall in Padum

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This variant where perpends are made of smaller stones is found in a recently made building, the Central Asian Museum in Leh, designed by André Alexander and the Tibet Heritage Fund and completed in 2015, for which a specially trained mason was needed since no one in Ladakh was able to build using this technique. The ‘banded texture’ technique is not found in common houses as its implementation clearly requires highly skilled craftsmen. This technique possibly entered Ladakh from Tibet, as suggested by André Alexander, but a wider range of influences is also possible from Pamir, Tajikistan or Afghanistan. Clear data on the use of this technique in Ladakh has not been reported yet.

The use of mortar in stone walls seems to be generally considered of the utmost importance. When placing a layer of stones a thick layer of mortar has to be poured on in order to fill all the gaps and protect the inside of the house from wind and small animals26. What is more important for the wall resistance is that all the possible gaps left in the wall section should be first filled with smaller stones27. In this process, flat and small stones are preferred instead of round ones. Every element should be inserted by hand in the right position to leave almost no gaps. Small flat stones are introduced to lock larger elements and this procedure can be controlled only by placing each of them by hand. However, the common practice is to pour a mixture of mortar and stones inside the cavities of the stone masonry, even if this makes the wall less cohesive. In Nubra stone walls were built layer after layer with a pause of even two days between one and the next28. This was made so that the mortar used to merge the previous layer of stones could dry before the next course started. When a layer has dried the construction continues and more mortar is poured to connect the next one. Nowadays, since houses are built very quickly, it is hard to find the same care when interlocking stone elements. Pauses for drying mortar are never made and often no extra stone fragments are inserted on the outer sides of walls to fill up gaps.

Before making a window or door opening in a stone wall, the wooden frame should be assembled first to check which stones better match with the frame contour29. Gaps can always be filled with mud mortar but a better execution of the opening contour is obtained through a selection of the stones made to fit the timber frame. The application of this method shows much about the care that can be taken in erecting a building. Certain dwellings need to be made quickly or can only be completed with timber frames that are prepared after the wall has been erected. Often, in the ground floor, the frame is fitted in the wall and after it is fixed it is filled with random rubble. This is done when the upper walls are erected, to avoid the frame tilting or bending under the loads of the unfinished upper structure.

Interview: Mohammad Nizamuddin.

Interview: Mohammad Nizamuddin.

28 Interview: Tundup Namgyal Manepa.

29 Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 138.

26 27

previous page A stonewall of random rubble with mud mortar

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Sun Dried Mud Brick Walls Sun dried mud bricks, known as pakbu (pag-bu), are one of the main construction elements used in Ladakh. Pakbu are used in many areas and are still among the cheapest materials on the market. Their employment grew also due to the possibility of transport even to places where soil was not suitable. In the past it was possible to select and dig earth from a site and then manufacture bricks, storing them until the house construction began. When earth is taken next to the building site it should come from a wet place with a good clay content. The earth used for the mixture should be compatible with its final transformation into a brick. Soils with a large stone content should be avoided30. Brick making was a fairly skilled job, contracted to the local village expert who charged a rate per hundred moulded bricks31. Mud bricks are quite fragile elements, as can be seen when those which fall from an old

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A mud brick wall in the old town Leh

wall are often broken. Even a brick that simply falls from one’s hand can easily break. This suggests that bricks were only made locally in the past because it was not convenient to transport them for long distances. Today not only the low cost, but the improved quality facilitated the transportation of mud bricks. Bricks transported in trucks are unloaded in a big pile, and only a few of them get broken in this process. The smaller and more compact bricks made today are probably more resistant than the longer bricks of the past, which proportionally were also thinner.

Earth and water are mixed to obtain a workable paste to be shaped into bricks into a wooden mould, pakshing (pag-shing); nowadays moulds are also made of metal. Old masons stress the importance of how earth and water should be well mixed to obtain good bricks. Mixing earth and water should not be a fast operation and ingredients have to be equally distributed in the mixture. One of the reasons for this is that water needs to equally evaporate from within the mixture, or uneven drying can cause cracks to the bricks once they are under the loads of the structure. A soil that is rich in sand, locally called ‘raw soil’, is not suitable for mud bricks. In different areas of Ladakh, the soil used for construction, and more specifically for brick making, is called with specific names32. For example, in certain areas of Nubra the earth used for bricks is called katpa (gad-ba)33. In Sumur there is a main distinction in the types of soil used in construction: zhinsa (zhing-sa) that is taken under the outer layer of the agricultural land or near the fields, and rutsa (rud-sa), taken from the mountains, from which large pieces of stone have to be removed before use34. In Kyagar the best bricks are made with ‘yellow soil’, that rarely requires the addition of other types of earth to improve its quality. In this village mortar is also made out of pure ‘yellow soil’35. Recycled earth from old bricks can be used for making new ones. In Skyurbuchan the reused earth is called khursa (‘khur-sa) and it is considered of higher quality when compared to recently excavated soil36.

Borah, Conservation… cit., p. 29.

Khosla, Buddhist… cit., p. 117.

32 Interview: Mohammad Nizamuddin.

33 Interview: Tundup Namgyal Manepa.

34 Interview: Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa.

35 Interview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

36 Interview: Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa.

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One way to understand when the earth and water mixture is ready to create bricks is to throw on the ground a bucket of mud mixture. A cohesive mortar should stick together and not fall apart. Another way is to put a shovel into the mixture and check that no mortar is stuck to it after its removal37. Bricks are generally made one by one because pakshing were made to mould single elements. Bricks should be patted with hands or with a stone into the mould and quickly removed to avoid the undried elements getting stuck in the mould. The drying process is very important and it should be carefully carried out. A slow drying process is considered to produce better quality bricks, as undried elements do not have enough compressive strength and often break even when hand-carried. Bricks are generally dried for 10-15 days (enough during good sunny days) and are turned over to dry on each side every 2 to 3 days38. Bricks are left to dry on the ground in an open-air area and collected into piles when ready to be stored. Proper drying can be recognized by the weight of the brick that should be half of the original mixture content put into the mould39. When turning a brick it is better to clean the side that has been in contact with the ground that is covered with small fragments of stone or dirt. The part of the bricks that is first placed on the ground is also more irregular and it is important to make sure to alternate these surfaces in every course when building so that the uneven surface better binds with the mortar.

Borah, Conservationâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 29.

Interview: Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa.

39 Borah, Conservationâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 30.

37 38

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A house entirely made of mud bricks in Kanji

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When the soil found in an area is not suitable for making bricks it is necessary to add other ingredients to the local earth, or different soil types have to be mixed. Additives commonly found are: • Hay: pugma (phug-ma); • Animal hair; • Clay: markalak (mar-ka-lag) Hay is chopped and added while the mixture is prepared and left to rot so that the volume of the vegetable fibres decreases before the brick is used in the construction, to avoid cracking. Pugma is added to increase the brick’s cohesion and increase tensile resistance against cracking. Two percent of pugma should be ideally added to the mixture40. Animal hairs are uncommon in recently made bricks, but they were used with the same purpose as hay, and sometimes they are also found mixed together, as for the bricks in the Kyagar zimskhang. Clay might be mixed to more sandy soil to prevent the brick from crumbling, but it has to be added in the right amount to reduce excessive shrinkage after drying. According to Borah the right amount of clay should be 15%, but it should not exceed 18-20%41. If clay is added to the mixture, lumps should be carefully broken. Clay needs to be reduced into a powder before mixing it with water, otherwise lumps could break and cause cracks in the wall when crumbling after drying. A good mason should be able to understand the soil quality through a direct examination. As reported by Debasish Borah a typical way to understand the amount of clay in the soil is the test made with one’s tongue. The mason picks a lump of earth and put it on his tongue to check how sticky the soil is. If the soil is partly sticking to the tongue, it means that the clay content is good enough for brick manufacture. Although this looks simple, this empirical way of understanding the soil’s properties requires much experience, especially when one has to understand how to balance the available earth with additives. Earth can be sieved to eliminate large fragments of stone or other materials but in many places, small aggregates, within the range of few millimetres, are left inside the mixture. In the village of Hemis Shukpachen three types of soil were deliberately selected and mixed with a small amount of a chopped local plant called set. These soil types were found around the village and they were: • 1/3 samar (sa-dmar) (red soil); • 1/3 sasngon (sa-sngon) (blue soil); • 1/3 markalak (clay).

However, it has been more than fifty years since anybody has used this mixture for brick making in the village. Nowadays, the soil available next to the building site is rather used, even if many villagers around Ladakh stressed that the quality of old bricks is much higher because of the carefully balanced mixture.

A recent issue is that villagers have no time to make bricks themselves and non-Ladakhi labourers are making them instead. Labourers do not know about different mixture compositions, and not least they

40 41

Ivi, p. 29.

Ibidem.

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also have less time to fabricate bricks. Today it is also possible to find cement bricks, even if the low cost of mud bricks makes them still the preferred ones. Cement bricks might be used for making more regular corners and are seen by many as more resistant, even if not suitable for insulation purposes.

In the past different brick sizes have been used. It is in recent times that standardized bricks have been introduced since most of the production is done in specific villages such as Shey and Thikse because of their good soil quality. Bricks were definitely larger in the past as compared to the standard ones used today. Nowadays bricks are produced mainly with a size of 30x15x13-15cm in the production centres. Even when bricks are made on the site and not bought they are of the same size. Bricks are mainly identified according to their length and most have a header corresponding to the half of their stretcher size. The height of the bricks might vary but in many samples the height is shorter than the length. A thin brick dries quickly and when it is of a large size it is easier to handle it. In general when a brick decreases in length, and the whole proportions are altered, it is not possible to reduce its height under a certain limit. As a consequence, the more a brick’s length is reduced the more the brick section is likely to assume a square shape instead of a rectangular one. This has a serious impact on certain brick bonds.

When bricks are laid so that in the façade only headers are visible, cracks can easily break through the minimum gaps left between perpends. Bricks and walls reduced in size and having been poorly assembled should be preferably avoided since they are weaker, despite these characteristics seeming to be more frequent today.

According to the systematic brick analysis made by Devers in his study of forts and religious structures, it is clear that an exact dating based on the brick size might be misleading42. What he suggests is that a ratio of the proportions of the bricks (relationship between length and width) should be considered instead. With his categorization three groups can be recognized43: • bricks with a ratio of length to width of less than 1.7; • bricks with a ratio between 1.7 and 2.2; • bricks with a ratio greater than 2.2.

As Devers underlines these groups do not correspond to regional differences, since they are present throughout the territory. A chronology seems nevertheless possible, by considering chorten and temples which are more easily datable than forts. Devers observes that modules whose ratio is less than 1.7 seem to be found only in monuments built before the 15th century, those with a ratio between 1.7 and 2.2 are observed in buildings more varied chronologically and finally bricks with a ratio exceeding 2.2 are all found in monuments or late reconstruction of monuments for which there is no reason to consider them as ancient, but rather as being after the 15th century44. This classification shows that in general the more diffused proportion was that between 1.7 and 2.2. This is reasonable since bricks with a Devers, Les Fortifcations… cit., p. 89.

Ibidem.

44 Ivi, pp. 90-91.

42 43

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Bricks measuring one cubit in Wakha

ratio that is less than 2 can be more easily employed for different brick-bonds since the width is less than half the length. In this way some space is left between bricks to be filled with mud mortar.

When looking at the houses, a decrease of the brick size in the new constructions can be noticed, at least analysing buildings of the last century. Exceptions are cases when old bricks are reused or a restoration is carried out and the original size of bricks from the previous building is maintained. Abandoned houses and houses which were older than 2 generations were usually made out of bricks of a considerably longer length than all the new constructions made with standardised mud bricks. In general, when measuring bricks, there is an inconsistency of data regarding their length when measured with a scale. Brick sizes almost always differ among different structures, in some cases even by as much as ten centimetres. This variability suggests looking at the brick size from another point of view. A new criteria based on anthropometric measurements is employed here. This criteria should only be considered for the analysis of houses since other examples have not been included in this study. An interesting consideration can be made if analysing the bricks taking into account the old measurement system and not the Metric or Imperial units which we are accustomed to. Using centimetres gives an odd idea of bricks sizes since in general all architecture in Ladakh was not built using precise scaling. Measuring units were based on the human body, but these were not standardized or fixed according to areas.

Measures could therefore change all the time since every builder used his own body as a reference. For this reason the cubit, the main unit used to measure a brick’s length, was different in every construction made by a different person. The cubit itself could be intended as the length of one’s arm with the close fist or with the stretched hand. In this case the brick mould could consistently vary in size. To this it should be added that every mud mixture could have shrunk differently according to its ingredients. The variety of brick size obtained is therefore great. This means that even if the measurement was the cubit, a large variety of bricks could have been made, out of ‘virtually’ one measurement only. This is the reason why when measuring bricks in abandoned or old houses they might vary approximately from 35 to 45 cm. It must be added that, in the village of Yogma Kharbu it was explained to me that in the past both Buddhist and Muslim families consulted the onpo (local astrologer) to decide the general house

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One header / skyangtrhom Second or first floor

Two headers A / zhitrhom First and second floor

Two headers B / zhitrhom First and second floor

Three headers / truktrhom Mainly first floor

dimension: width and length of the fabric45. The perimeter of a house was established on the ground by mean of a thread divided in units consisting of cubits. It is yet to be understood who was in charge of making the measure on the thread, and if the same person was also in charge or measuring the brick size. In spite of this issue it makes sense that the number of bricks used for the different rooms could be calculated, since the same measurement unit was used for the building contour, main room/wall size, and brick length without having a high degree of precision. Random rubble was of course out of question when it came to measurements, since every element was different.

Different brick bonds are used in Ladakh, and these can be chosen according to the house size or the specifically required wall resistance. Larger bricks allow the use of a single line of bricks, as typical for Nubra. The brick bonds used are: • Skyangtrhom (rkyang-khrom)(single-header); • Zhitrhom (bzhi-khrom) (2 headers); • Truktrhom (drug-khrom) (3 headers); • Rgyatrhom (brgya-khrom) (4 headers).

When a door has to be fixed in a wall made with a single-header bond, the wall around the frame is made thicker with the use of a two headers bond. This is done to create a thicker contour to better install the wooden doorframe and to emphasize the gate. The bricks are bound with mud mortar, but it is uncommon to see mortar in the perpends of recently built houses. This is evident not only when bricks are used to fill concrete frames, but also in load bearing structures. In the latter case, the lack of binding material can compromise the wall stability, especially in case of earthquake, while decreasing the overall thermal insulation of the wall.

45

Interview: Kacho Mumtaz Khan.

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Brick-bonds

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Rammed earth house in Hunderman (left) Rammed earth wall in Wakha (right)

Rammed Earth Walls Rammed earth walls, known as rgyapak (rgya-pag), kyang (gyang) or kyangpak (gyang-pag), are usually built in areas where the soil available is considered ‘hard soil’, a sandy-gravel soil that has enough clay to bind the mixture. The earth mixture can contain a certain amount of aggregates; a good amount is considered to be 15-20%. An excessive silt content would make the wall brittle and easily damageable by rain. For rammed earth walls however, the soil can contain more sand than the one used for bricks. Zangla, a village in Zangskar, is considered by locals to have a particularly suitable soil for making rammed earth. In the past it was common to use a willow mesh as a shutter board when ramming the earth. The walls made with this temporary formwork can be recognized because the wattle imprint can be seen on the wall surface. This method was particularly useful in areas with scarce wood, since planks were not needed for making the shutter boards. Small willow sticks are woven vertically around longer horizontal ones, which all together constitute the shutter boards. Larger vertical sticks are connected with similar horizontal ones to brace the frames and clamp them together. Rammed earth walls can also be made using wooden planks that create a sturdier shuttering. In fact, walls made with a willow wattle present a protuberance in the middle of their section. This is due to the fact that while the earth is tamped, the formwork tends to expand because of its reduced tensile strength, and the result is a swollen section of the wall. Formwork can be made of different dimensions, but always considering that they have to be preferably moved by two people; a common length is of 8 to 9ft (243-275cm) and a height of 1ft (30cm). The thickness of rgyapak used for houses is thinner compared to palaces and forts. Rammed earth walls can be of two types as far as their section is considered. Some decrease their width due to the fact that for every layer of rammed earth, the formwork is shifted and the wall section has to be reduced by the form’s thickness. Every upper part of the wall diminishes in section. A stratum of projecting stones could also be used between layers to avoid the reduction of the wall section. Often in this case, the cross pieces of wood used to hold the formwork are alternated with stones. In this way, the cross pieces are removed more easily, and the holes left can be closed with other stones. This stone layer adds compressive strength to the wall section, creating at the same time a more stable base for the tamping of the upper layer.

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Layers decreasing in width

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Rammed Earth Formwork

Layers alterned with slate stones

The earth and water mixture should be well mixed for rgyapak as for other techniques employing a mud mixture. The mixture should be less liquid than the one used for mortar and bricks because it has to be rammed. Each wall section is tamped inside the formwork until the earth is compact enough and the layer cannot drop in height anymore. Earth should be added in different phases and the whole formwork should not be filled with earth to the rim at one time, so that each thinner stratum is better compacted; especially when tamping is done by hand with a wooden stick as is still common today. Fifteen to eighteen days under a bright sun are needed to dry the exterior while two months are necessary

Layers alterned with vegetal fibres

to dry the core and it is not advisable to place floors before external drying. In Skyurbuchan a carpenter explained that a layer of mountain shrubs called set could be put between layers of rammed earth46.

This highly tensile strength resistant wood is useful to prevent both vertical and horizontal cracks in rgyapak. Usually there is no interest in preventing horizontal cracking, while vertical cracks should be avoided especially near a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s corner. The alternation of layers to shift the joints is not made in many houses. When joints are overlapped, especially near the corners, the two walls are only juxtaposed one to the other. Any movement in the foundations causes the two walls to move separately, with the formation of a large gap which compromises the stability of the whole structure. Rammed earth walls require much human labour compared to mud brick walls, but rammed earth proved more durable and resistant when properly implemented. This is clearly visible in the large number of forts and boundary walls found around the region, some of them built hundreds of years ago.

46

Interview: Sonam Tundup.

Layers alterned with random rubble

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Rammed earth wall sections

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A framework for rammed earth in Wakha

Stud Walls with Timber Framing Filled with Stones This technique is the least employed in the area of Ladakh even if it is often found in bordering regions such as Baltistan and Himachal Pradesh. Environmental conditions are crucial and the lower areas like Kargil, Batalik, Turtuk, or west of Leh mainly use stone and timber47. Wood scarcity is the main factor influencing timber-framed constructions. It is evident in the work of Quentin Devers that, in the past, this technique was employed in palaces and forts48. This technique employs cribbage columns together with a series of wooden beams that are placed throughout the wall according to fixed intervals to create a frame that is filled with random rubble. The large amount of wood employed provides more tensile resistance than in mud buildings. Stone acts as the compressive resistant counterpart even if used as an infill. High quality structures can be found today in Turtuk (Nubra), a Balti village on the border with Pakistan.

47 48

Borah, Conservation… cit., p. 29.

Devers, Les Fortifcations… cit.

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Mortar Mud mortar, known as kalak (ka-lag), is used to bind both stones and mud bricks and to fill up gaps in frames or any mesh made with branches. Earth is mixed with water on the building site, sometimes even on the unfinished floor while the house is being built and prepared whenever needed. An important criterion for water and earth mixture is that the ingredients should be well mixed and that the mixture texture should not be too rough to allow equal drying and added ingredients to be well distributed.

The earth used is sometimes taken from the building site and in other cases is selected from a particular area in case it is considered more suitable. Mud should be used only to fill small gaps in order to obtain strong walls, since kalak does not have tensile or compressive strength; this is particularly important for stone works49.

Apart from earth and water, other ingredients can be added to the mixture, such as hay and clay. Hay is added to increase the tensile strength and avoid excessive shrinkage. For this reason it is important to roughly chop hay and to let it decompose into the earth and water mixture before using it, as seen for the brick mixture. Clay is an important element that should be present in mortar and that can be otherwise added to the mixture if the available soil does not contain enough of it. For this purpose, even lower quality clay (not the finest one employed for plaster) can be added. In Hundar the mortar mixture is made with a clay content of 1/3 and 2/3 of soil found near agricultural land50. An excessive clay content might cause cracks. The best soil is found between the highest layer of earth and the lowest one, under the surface layer of the agricultural soil, which is not good because it has traces of organic matter which is decomposing. In this way precious agricultural soil is also saved. The addition of other elements, or the creation of a special earth mixture for kalak, is only necessary when local soil is not suitable as it is, but this practice is not always followed nowadays. In fact, it is more and more common, to obtain a quicker execution, to mix any earth found at hand with water (often mixed very quickly) just to obtain a workable mixture that has very few properties. Taking readily available soil could result in a mortar mixture with many stone fragments or pebbles. This should always be avoided to have a smooth mortar suitable for every use. Today it is also possible to notice a high use of cement mortar. Cement should not be combined with earth in particular since they easily detach. Sometimes mortar is recycled from dismantled buildings. This is visible in the new constructions because of the darker colour of the mortar which contains the soot and dirt deposits accumulated on the older mortar. This type of recycled material is considered to be better quality, partly because of the soot content that makes it more resistant to water. Recycling mortar or earth shows again the capacity of Ladakhi builders to always reuse materials from old houses not only because it is convenient, but also because of their better quality.

49 50

Interview: Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa.

Interview: Tsering Tundup Shiachiopa.

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Non-Structural Partitions Non-structural partitions can be used inside the house to create extra rooms while saving space and without overloading horizontal structures. Thin partitions can also be used for the house façade: these can be attached to a wooden frame or connected to other load bearing walls. The wattle and daub technique is used for these partitions, which are commonly found in Kargil, even if surviving only in few old houses and the still standing caravanserai in town. Willow sticks are woven and used to create a mesh shak (bshag), then mud-coated51. Wattle and daub is a cheap solution to create partitions for houses, using little wooden elements for lighter partitions. Partitions made of wattle are often found for fencing private land, animal pens and are also used to create very light gates.

Battered Walls Tapering walls characterize the regional architecture for they give any construction a solid and strong appearance, making even the simpler house look like a fortress. In fact the battered walls are an ingenious way to erect a stable and resistant masonry, especially when the building materials employed are not very resistant, as with mud bricks, or materials bound with mud only. Battered walls are mainly built in two variants. The more complex one has a diminishing wall section which is tilted from the

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Battered wall of the Leh palace

outside, but having a vertical surface inside. Another way to build a tapering wall is that obtained with mud bricks and consists of shifting every single element towards the inside of the house, so that all the wall is tilted and maintains the same width. Erecting battered walls is more difficult than erecting straight walls, in particular if the wall has to have a constant slope, and sharp edges. In Ladakh one of the main reasons, explained not only by masons, that has led to construction of tapering walls, is that of collapse in case of an earthquake. It is said that in case this ever happened, the tilted walls would always collapse inward, creating less damage around the construction. A saying states that when the edge of a battered wall is properly built, this should be able to cut a yak in two pieces, if thrown on the wall edge from the rooftop. A decline in the use of the technique makes the battered wall a rarity today. Common houses are nowadays built with straight walls. The oldest mason interviewed during the fieldwork, a hundred year-old man known as Meme Amchi from Pipiting, built his own house using battered walls with the second technique explained. Even this man who used to erect walls with this technique knew no specific word to define the tapering wall. He was simply referring to it as nangkuk rtsikpa (nangkhug rtsig-pa), which is a description meaning ‘the wall that goes inside’.

Timber Lacings To stabilize load-bearing walls, mainly made of stones or bricks, timber lacings can be inserted in the masonry. This technology known as sketshing (sked-shing) probably comes from Gilgit or Baltistan. Today this technique is mainly seen in restoration work and it is used by architects involved in conserva51

Interview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

previous page Wattle and daub partition in a house in Hundar

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Scheme of the Sketshing

tion projects or interested in local techniques. Sketshing consist of two main wooden beams, running on both external and internal horizontal wall section perimeters. These two beams are connected with perpendicular wooden elements to create a tie for the whole construction level. When metal used to be scarce only wooden nails were used. Since the beams cannot be long enough to extend around the whole building, single elements need to be overlapped to maintain the lacings’ continuity. This is important to prevent vertical cracks going through the wooden elements52. Beams also create a straight base for continuing the erection of the masonry during construction, adjusting uneven courses. Since sketshing require a good amount of wood, this technology had been mainly employed for large houses, monasteries, palaces and forts.

Openings Openings include a variety of windows, karkhung (dkar-khung), and the doors, go (sgo). In general it is better to refer to ‘windows’ as to openings, since many are literally just holes in the wall, while others are very elaborate, with complex woodwork and richly carved frames. Windows are likely to be on the south and east sides of a house, while the north and west sides are closed to protect the house. Exceptions are the storage rooms and toilet that need only a ventilation slit which can be placed anywhere, or else rooms to be cooled by summer breeze put on the west. There is no specific relationship between the room size and the window dimension. A characteristic of all openings of the past is that they were kept very small. Apart from large openings for rapsal rooms, shelkhang or chhongtse, windows did not 52

Interview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

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The Chhotkhang Door in the Munshi House

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The small windows and single large opening for a balcony of the Doks Abapa house in Mulbekh

allow a person to pass through them and doors were so small to force everyone to bend when entering a room. The small openings emphasize the wall mass contrasting with the larger openings on the upper levels in the larger buildings. Openings were kept small for many practical reasons such as: • Avoid heat loss both towards the outside (windows) and internal rooms (doors); • Save wood, without using large timber elements; • Prevent thieves from entering the building.

However, openings were not small not only for practical reasons. Small openings, whether a window or door, had to be low enough for the spirits to be kept out, since ghosts were believed to be very tall.

previous page A window in an abandoned house in Skyurbuchan

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Large opening in a ruined house in Lamayuru

Windows Window size generally increases starting from the lower going to the upper floors. Smaller windows are used in the ground floor for the stables, while larger ones are used on the first floor or above, sometimes associated with balconies. In this way the façade becomes lighter in weight towards the upper floors because it is richer in timber components. This method of employing wood in the façade is also structurally sound, since the load on the lower structures is reduced. At the same time the increase in window size towards the rooftop creates contrasting variations of shades in the façade’s composition. Moreover, the upper storeys assume more relevance because rooms are brighter and woodcarvings richer. This is evident in wealthier households and palaces, since they have at least three storeys. Windows and doors used to be all wood jointed and in certain cases wooden nails shingzer (shing-gzer) were employed.

Windows can be very simple ventilation openings, like those found in the ground floor for stables. In this case, wooden lintels are inserted above a hole left in the masonry that is left open. While the wall is built, beams are put in the wall when the opening level is reached. This method is also used for fitting windows when no frame is ready to be put in place during the construction process. Window frames could be prepared in advance and later fitted into the wall construction. The frame is later inserted and gaps between masonry and frame are filled with mud mortar if necessary. Otherwise wooden frames

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can be partly connected with the wall by prolonged horizontal ends of the frame. The simplest frames found in areas where wood is very scarce, such as Zangskar, can be made out of untrimmed willow branches that are likely to leave many gaps between frame and wall because of their irregular section.

Where poplar can be made into planks, this wood is planed for the door and window frames. Nowadays, wood from Srinagar is preferred because it is cheaper and available in large quantities. Window frames are internally subdivided with timber rails, having certain parts permanently closed with wooden panels. However, all the openings could be temporarily closed in different ways: with rotating shutters on the inside (more expensive solution), with paper, with wattle or even closed only at night with heavy cloths hung on them or pressed inside the window hole. A wooden pivot system is a complex technology to be made with almost no tools, especially for small windows, after the introduction of metal hinges the construction of shutters and doors was made much easier. Sometimes paper was used to close windows, guaranteeing that light could enter while stopping the breeze. Rice paper or other vegetable fibre paper could be hung on the openings and rubbed with butter or oil for insulation. Wattle was placed on the window permanently and changed when covered with soot, approximately every two years53. Openings found in more important rooms, such as chhotkhang or rapsal rooms, could also have special wooden elements added to their openings. The windows were sometimes covered with a latticework called mirang or panjari. This woodwork is made of small wooden components connected only with wooden joints. To test the latticework quality and resistance it is said that a good finished piece can be thrown from the roof of a house without breaking into pieces54. Latticework is very similar to the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;mujarabiehâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; found in Islamic art, and probably have as well a Muslim influence since they are usually made by Balti or Kashmiri artisans rather than Ladakhis.

Before the 20th century no glass was available in Ladakh. Glass has been imported in recent times and it became widespread during the last decades. After glass was introduced windows were fitted with panes.

Larger openings are not only preferred today for they bring more light and air inside the building, but also because they are considered to be more attractive by most of the locals55. Regarding this point, it can be objected that, in terms of proportions, windows in new constructions have often become excessively large, especially in houses that maintained the original volume and mass. The proportions beInterview: Tsering Tundup Shiachiopa.

Interview: Sonam Tundup.

55 Interview: Tashi Tsering Hasara.

53 54

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Windows from the more simple to the more complex ones

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Latticework made by a Balti craftsman in the Lharjeypa house in Sumur

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Window of a house in Wakha Window of the Pisang house in Igu

tween the wall mass and the openings is not balanced anymore as it used to be. Oversized windows create a less resistant masonry too, especially when large openings are placed near a wall corner or directly on it. Houses started to be renovated with larger windows more than 60 years ago. There is a noticeable size difference between the large windows installed 20 to 30 years ago and those made nowadays.

All round the openings, on the external side of the house, a plaster band can be put around the outline.

This is often smoother and thicker than the wall plaster, emphasizing the opening in the bare wall.

Around the openings, this thick layer of plaster is commonly dyed in black. This band, whose origin is probably from Tibet, is thick and makes the window look larger from the outside than it actually is56.

Some of these bands taper towards the lintel as if they were following the wall batter. The black colour is obtained from soot deposits scraped from kitchen interiors or from pots and mixed with water and ashes, later applied with a brush or cloth pad57. The black band is called nakchhu (nag-chu), literally meaning black water, referring to the soot-water mixture used to paint it.

Shingtsak Above lintels, windows can have elaborate woodwork that is integrated with the wall construction. This complex architectural element, made of several parallel and perpendicular components, is known as shingtsak (shing-rtsag / shing-brtsegs), literally meaning stacked-wood. Shingtsak is a very distinctive element in Ladakh’s architecture and nowadays it is still considered an important symbol of prestige for the house. In the past, only the well-off could afford to integrate shingtsak in the openings, especially because of the difficulty in procuring enough wood. As seen before, the shingtsak, represents the ‘Tibetan classical-order’ on the building façade, and it is the main element of the ‘order’ that is visible on the building’s elevation. For this reason, all the other decorative elements are secondary as compared to the shingtsak.

56 57

Pommaret Imaeda, The construction… cit., p. 252.

Ibidem.

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The shingtsak is composed of the following wooden elements from the window lintel upwards: • Tukul (tu-kul) and sgakshing (‘gag-shing); • Flat wooden pieces or bargeps (bar-gebs); • Tukul or phaksna (phag-sna) and sgakshing; • Ranshing (ran-shing).

These wooden fixtures form a system that widens over the openings. Above the shingtsak there is a coping made of a layer of mud bricks or stones. Above the coping are slate stones, yamangs (gya’-mangs), covered with more mud which protects all the layers on the top. This relatively heavy coping stabilizes the shingtsak and protects it from rain; this part is called chharlen (char-len). All the timber elements were connected with wooden nails, shingzer, while today metal nails are employed instead. The whole shingtsak was assembled first on the ground and then put above the window lintel before continuing the erection of the masonry. Newly made shingtsak are prefabricated in carpenter’s workshops or sometimes still made on site in small villages. Today most of the used wood is imported from Kashmir while, in the past, local poplar was used. The assembled shingtsak has cavities between parallel and perpendicular wooden components. The cavities are filled up with sun dried mud bricks and stones, but also lighter vegetable fibre can be added to decrease the weight on the lintels inside the wall. Poplar bark is typically used as an infill material because it is a leftover product, it is light, and it has insulating properties. The recent introduction of larger windows has altered the shingtsak proportions. The multiplication of its components and the hyper-decorated elements have made new windows looking very heavy and excessively long and repetitive along the façades. This shows how the simple repetition of the elements (adapting to the larger openings) has not considered the evolution of the proportions of the architrave, more gradually developed according to the original window size. Nonetheless, this marks how the shingtsak is an invaluable component for a house’s elevation. In fact, the shingtsak above windows were, even in the past (but only considering the smaller openings), meant to be a status marker and an element of the façade design composition rather than structural elements. The wood was stacked so that the wooden elements could project from the façades (to be visible), while inside there were no traces of the wooden components. Only on the larger openings of a rapsal, for example, the shingtsak was acting like a composite lintel. In this case, the expansion of the shingtsak on both sides resulted in a high beam made of several small components that could carry the thick and heavy masonry above the opening. This ingenious way of creating a composite beam was useful to save larger wooden members for the lintel, while expanding the opening upwards.

Doors The largest door in a house is the main entrance: pisgo (phyi-sgo). In the past a door on the ground floor was the entrance, connecting the stables through an internal stair to the main living quarter. Mainly

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Section of a Window and Shingtsak in the Chube House

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Door and Frame

from the last century, the addition of an external stone staircase: rdoskas (rdo-skas), enabled the connection of the first floor directly from the outside. Internal doors are kept smaller than the main entrance. Door width may vary. The main entrance is approximately 4-5ft (122-150cm) wide including the frame, while an internal door is 2-3ft (60-90cm)58. The door height was usually around 4ft (122cm) and only in recent decades the doors became high enough not to force one to bend to go through them. Doors were made of wooden planks put vertically against each other. Through horizontal holes made in the planks, two or three wooden rods secured all the elements together. The door rotates because one of the planks is longer on the edges and rounded at both ends. In this way, a bearing socket and a pivot pin system is created and two holes — one on the upper and one on the lower part of the threshold — are used to insert the door and let it rotate. Few doors are decorated in the house, usually those put in the chhotkhang, rapsal room or the main entrance. The one used for the chhotkhang could be painted and enriched with chiselled metal elements. Internal doors might have had a closing system, but the more complex lock is on the main gate. Locks used to close the main gate were only made of wood: shingkulik (shing-ku-lig) (wooden-lock), and they were integrated into the wall construction. Otherwise Chinese pattern padlocks were later introduced into a variety of different sizes and could be any size up to 25cm long59.

58 59

Interview: Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa.

Pommaret Imaeda, The construction… cit., p. 253.

previous page A door made only with wooden components

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Pillar, capital and beam in an abandoned house in Igu

Horizontal Structures, Beam-Pillar System and Flooring Horizontal structures were erected making use of all the different wood types available. The use of arches or vaults has never been found in Ladakh. Small rooms can span their entire width without any need for posts. In some cases a primary beam is added in the middle of the room, when the span reaches or exceeds 10-12ft (305-365cm). Usually, for a total span of 15-16ft (457-487cm), it is not possible to use only secondary beams since they would inevitably bend or crack. To have a bigger space, it is necessary to place a primary beam, and when needed to erect a pillar in the middle of the room. In this way a modular system of beams and posts is created. A space can be enlarged according to this principle of repetition by adding more primary beams and pillars. When more than one column is needed, the room is made bigger with a number of ka that is always multiple of two. For houses it is normal not to use more than four columns for each single room, since only monastic structures or royal residences needed and afforded larger spaces.

Wooden elements are generally left as they are found. In some cases bark was peeled off from trunks but because of the lack of metallic tools, they were not shaped into any particular form. Wooden elements could have a shaped section only for luxurious residences or important rooms. In the past tim-

house construction technology

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Beam-pillar System 3 Old Togochepa house-Hemis Shukpachan 1. Pillar / ka 2. Capital / kazhu 3. Primary beam / mardung 4. Secondary beam / dungma 5. Willow sticks / tralu 6. Shrubs / bilap 7. Earth / sa

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ber elements were only planed with an axe and this work required highly skilled carpenters and much time. Traces of these handcrafted wooden elements can be still found in houses which preserved the old structural elements. On the other hand, to facilitate the connection of the wooden elements, some parts of the trunk are chipped away in order to create a flat surface out of roundish trunks. In general wooden elements simply rest on each other. Sometimes they are connected by tongue and groove joints or by mean of timber nails. Wooden ceilings are made of a sequence of layers which employ any type and shape of wood, making the best use of what is available: • Primary beams: mardung (ma-gdung); • Secondary beams: dungma (gdung-ma); • Wooden sticks: tralu (gral-bu); • A layer of non-rotting shrubs: bilap (lbi-lab); • Earth.

Mardung is the larger and longer beam employed. Its name shows its structural relevance, since ma refers to ‘main’ or ‘mother’. Mardung is made out of poplar trunks, usually not planed. Concrete beams or steel sections appeared in mixed-technique floors only recently. Dungma are secondary beams usually made of poplar; in areas in which straight bole poplar is scarce other varieties are used. Other varieties are lower in quality because their bole is not straight and less resistant. The tralu are willow sticks used above secondary beams to complete the structure of the floor. Above the tralu there is a layer of

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Pillar and capital variations

a non-rotting shrub that varies according to what is locally available. Usually this layer is called bilap.

The bilap is used to prevent part of the earth from falling in between the tralu and to protect the wooden structural elements from being in direct contact with the water contained in the mud placed above.

When the ceiling construction is not carried out properly, or when it has deteriorated, it is a common practice to hang a cotton sheet on the inside, under the beams, to catch the fine debris that are falling from the structure60. Sometimes vegetable fibres can be woven to obtain a mesh that can be put above the tralu to better prevent dust from coming down through the floor layers. Above the shrubs an earth layer is compacted in order to create the floor level.

The floor construction follows this procedure: 1. Mardung or dungma are placed on the load bearing walls. Flat stones can be put underneath the beams ends, dungna (gdung-sna), to better distribute the load on the earth walls. This is made to avoid cracks and also to level the base for each beam that is usually irregular; 2. The tralu are laid on dungma. Sticks can be overlapped on top of a dungma for the beam’s entire thickness. Otherwise, it is possible to remove a small portion of stick at both its edges to better place them on the roundish dungma. It is not advisable to have tralu longer than 45cm since an average section of 4cm tends to bend61. The tralu are sometimes disposed with a tilted angle of 45° to create a decorative effect when seen from below; 3. Shrubs or woven vegetable fibre meshes are laid on top of the tralu; 4. Mud is spread all over and pressed with feet to level it and to let it dry.

Before the first truck reached Ladakh from Srinagar in 1977, people and animals carried timber beams62. Because of the scarcity of wood, dungma can be split horizontally into two pieces. In this way two thinner half sections of a dungma are obtained. They can be used for ceilings that are not supporting heavy loads, such as a corridor or a veranda’s covering. Wood employed for primary or secondary beams should be better seasoned before being used. In case there is no time to wait, it would be better to leave part of the bark on the trunk. In this way the bark should prevent the beam from cracking because of shrinkage and the load applied on it. Usually dungma and mardung are placed on the walls and their ends project towards the outside. Sometimes these projections are used for balconies, rapsal, Khosla, Buddhist… cit., p. 121.

Borah, Conservation… cit., p. 38.

62 Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 141.

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Wooden Flooring

or cut only once the building is completed63. When tralu was not available in large quantities, all the single sticks could not be laid tightly one next to the other. Leaving gaps while laying tralu would result in a less resistant floor and that is why a particular shrub was put perpendicularly above the tralu.

This shrub is called askuta (as-ku-ta) and it is extremely resistant as compared to other local shrubs64.

The presence of these thinner shrub sticks above the tralu can be noticed only in buildings that were built before 40-50 years ago. In case a house could afford a wooden floor, this would be made of a series of long timber planks occupying most of the floor length. Smaller planks are put perpendicularly between the longer elements and fixed with wooden joints. The wooden joints are assembled using the same principle using a tongue and groove system.

Especially in tall buildings, masons used to lay beams so that they could be easily replaced when severely damaged. Beams are put in the wall so that, after every storey is completed, the continuing wall is not raised directly on top of the beams. In this way the wall becomes thinner, but the floor can be modified and its components replaced without requiring any intervention to the walls. Cracked beams could be just lifted in this way by removing part of the floor without moving a single element of the walls.

Pillars Pillars have been previously presented for their important symbolical role in the fireplace room. Here ka is analysed according to its structural and technical role in the house construction. Ka can be just

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Pommaret Imaeda, The constructionâ&#x20AC;Ś cit., p. 250.

Interview: Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa.

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Stone coping of a terrace in a house in Kanji

a poplar trunk used as a support, becoming more and more elaborated to the point of being planed, carved and painted; as those found in chhotkhang. Pillars often rest on a stone base. This stone can be put first on the lower wall before the pillar is placed, to establish a secure connection between the lower structure and the upper structure. Otherwise, the whole wooden frame made of pillars, beams and tralu can be put into its position: before the mud is laid for the flooring, pillars are lifted and a flat stone is put underneath them. In order to implement this technique, certain pillars have a small notch at their base, so that they can be lifted using a wooden tool, acting as a lever. In this way the whole framed system is better tied together. Above the pillar is often connected a capital: kazhu (ka-gzhu), literally meaning pillar’s bow. In its more elaborate form, this element is very close to the shape of a bow, while very simple squarish elements can be added to the columns just to increase the total height of the posts.

Making use of capitals is useful to increase the total height of the structure without the need of longer trunks for columns. Moreover, a large kazhu makes the beam’s section higher, increasing its tensile resistance. The pillar, capital and beam system, achieves many functions at the same time in its more elaborate structural form with the addition of corbelled brackets over the main beam. This is possibly the shingtsak prototype as well. These small pieces of wood placed over the main beam raise the ceiling height while having an aesthetic function at the same time. Structural stability is given by the use of wooden joints.

house construction technology

Roofing The flat roof, thok (thog), is an essential part of the house, not least because it represents one of the more visible features of the house outer volume. Among the reasons why the Ladakhi house is commonly built with a flat roof is the need for a flat surface to be used in winter when most of the ground can be snow covered (that is the case in particular of certain areas of Ladakh). The roof, always kept clean to prevent it from collapse, is an outer extension of the house. It is interesting to notice that vaults and domes were never employed, or at least this have never been attested yet. However it is unlikely that through the merchant routes these technologies had not reached the Himalayas, so there may be other reasons. As noticed by Szabo and Barfield in their analysis of vernacular architecture in Afghanistan the houses found in regions with cold winters, particularly in the mountains, are invariably flat-roofed65. The flat roof, with its poplar beams, wood and brush lathing, and layers of clay finish, is a much better insulator than a curved roof that consist of a single layer of bricks with a mud coating.

Moreover, vaults would increase the height of the ceiling, making the room more difficult to be heated with scarce fuel, since warm air would collect above the living space.

Roofs can easily decay if not properly maintained or built. The construction of a roof is the same as for a floor. The difference is due to the fact that the layer of earth used to finish it has to be more resistant against weather agents. What makes a roof different from a normal floor is its capacity to be more water resistant. In Ladakh rain was not an issue and a certain amount of markalak in the roof strata was sufficient to prevent leakage. Since we have already treated the construction of horizontal structures, here we will focus only on analysing the earth used for the highest roof layer. Sometimes a type of soil known as thoksa (thog-sa) (roof soil) is employed. This soil might be a readily available earth with enough clay content or a special mixture purposely made for the roof with extra markalak. A better water protection is obtained with a clay content which is increased in the upper stratum of the mud coating. Lower layers do not need much clay, while higher layers need markalak to retain water and let it evaporate to prevent moisture from penetrating the roof structure. In recent years, heavy rains have damaged wooden roofs because markalak is not a waterproof agent. An excessive amount of rain makes the earth saturated with water, and if there is no time for evaporation, water leaks through the earth roof. A thin layer of dirt is often put above the outer markalak stratum for two reasons: to prevent markalak from being scraped away by people walking on the roof and to avoid wet markalak sticking on shoes. One of the main causes for roof leakage is not only the excessive amount of rainfall but also the lack of a proper slope. Without enough sloping of the roof and a drainage system to let the excess water out, it is impossible to avoid stagnant water soaking the earth, causing leakage.

Nowadays many people have started putting cement finishing on their rooftop to try and avoid leakage, 65

A. Szabo, T.J. Barfield, Afghanistan: an Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture, Austin 1991, p. 137.

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or pitched tin roofs have replaced flat roofs. A cheaper way to avoid seepage is to lay a polythene sheet on the roof in case of bad weather. Drastic changes in annual rainfalls made people shift from purely earth-made rooftops to other architectural solutions without considering a proper technical evaluation for the roof. Cement finishing usually cracks, and often this solution does not work because of the lack of waterproof joints. Tin roofs not only modify the whole house volume, but also change the rooftop usability. A solution which could harmoniously merge both technical and cultural features of flat roofs in Ladakh is yet to be found. For now, in Ladakh, many locals and professionals are still implementing earth-made flat roofs, even if excessive rainfalls are a constant threat. What is probably one of the most important strategies for the efficacy of an earth roof is its maintenance. In the past people used to keep on adding earth to the roof, so that it could absorb more water. In this way the roof became excessively thick, often bending the beams. Roofs, generally 1ft (30cm) thick (including beams), could have had an extra layer of more than 50cm of earth on them. The constant accumulation of earth should be avoided, but proper maintenance of the outer layers, roof slope, drainage pipes and parapet is crucial for the system to work. In the past the soot produced in certain rooms from the open fire, penetrating through the grass layers, created a partly waterproof stratum that constantly increased together with the amount of soot. This partly waterproof ceiling is similar to the nomads’ yak-wool tents, which become more and more waterproof with use, because of soot imprisoned in the wool fibres.

A low parapet, thokrgyang (thog-brgyang), is built around the rooftop. This is generally in between 3050cm high, and hay is put to dry on top of it. Thokrgyang is cantilevered on wooden sticks (like the tralu) towards the façade. This secondary structure projects from the wall and other thinner rods are put perpendicularly on them to create the base where sun dried mud bricks or stones are laid to raise the parapet. On top of it, slate stone, yamangs, is used to prevent water from penetrating. A pile of compacted earth is put above slate stone. This creates a small slope for water to flow that needs to be replaced from time to time. Many roofs lacked drain pipes because of the scarcity of rain, but especially for large roofs, wooden carved ‘tubes’ were used to drain the water. The ‘spouts’ were evenly added to the parapet to drain excess water, projecting outside the wall elevation. The most critical point on a terrace is the connection between the parapet and the roof structure, especially where drainage pipes are inserted, since water can easily seep into this intersection on the edge. To avoid an unprotected edge, yamangs can be put with a 45° angle between the parapet and the rooftop to prevent water from seeping through the intersection point. If this detail is not made with the utmost technical care, it is almost impossible to avoid water leaking from the terrace on the outer side of the wall or even inside the rooms.

Nowadays more and more houses are fitted with pitched roofs. These are made of tin sheets fastened with rivets on wooden or metal structures. It is common to find this solution when families leave Ladakh in winter to move to warmer places around India. The pitched roof needs less maintenance since the snow does not need to be shovelled, so the house can be left even for a long periods in winter.

previous page The making of a roof in Leh

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Projecting parapet of a house in Kanji

Pitched roofs are often placed above the older flat roof which in many cases cannot be used as an open terrace anymore. The closer one get to Kashmir, where pitched roofs are part of the built environment, the more one notices the presence of new pitched roofs in Ladakh. These are often unpainted tin sheets which can be seen from a distance because the strong sunlight is reflected from them.

next page Portion of plaster in the Wazir house in Stok

Plaster Houses are finished with mud plaster, known as zhala (zha-la) or sazhal (sa-zhal). Its composition might be different according to the type of added ingredients, or to its final use (inside or outside the house) and also to the wall type. Plaster ingredients can be: • Earth; • Earth + hay; • Earth + animal dung.

Earth used for plaster can be of different types. A certain amount of markalak is needed for plaster, and first class finer clay is preferable. Depending on the use of one or two plastering layers the amount of markalak can be different. In general more than 5% added markalak should not be put in the mixture, to avoid cracking66. Earth can be mixed with hay, for cracks prevention, and with animal dung to have 66

Borah, Conservation… cit., p. 42.

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next page Ladder against a wall of the Kyagar zimskhang

better insulation. When hay is added, the outer layer should be covered with finely chopped hay in order to prevent damage to the surface in case of accidental removal of any dry fibre. The methods used to obtain a better mud mixture have already been explained for mortar and they are the same for plaster. There is no single way to make plaster and the number of layers and total thickness might differ from place to place. The following examples are useful to understand the main differences: • Two layers are used in Skyurbuchan: the first layer is made with fine soil and markalak and the second layer has reduced silt content to avoid crumbling. After the first layer is completed a mild drying is necessary, to prevent the two layers from not combining well. Partial drying should not cause cracking on its surface. The second layer can be put after a mild drying. The second layer is made smooth using quality river stone, the same type of stone used for finishing clay statues67.

• In Padum only the first layer contains hay, while the outer is thinner and without pugma. After the completion of the first layer, plaster has to dry until cracks form. Cracks are then filled with a liquid mixture containing markalak before putting the second layer. The two layers equal a total of 2in (5cm)68.

• Outer plaster in Kanji is simply mud, while the inner one is a mixture whose major part (more than a half) is made of yak dung. Sometimes other animal dung is used. Yak dung is particularly good for insulation and it makes the plaster very hard, but the total thickness should not exceed 1/2 in (1,27cm) to avoid detachment69.

• In Sumur zhinsa is used and mixed with hay for both inner and outer plasters. The finish has a rough texture because it is hand spread and it not smoothed after completion70.

These examples show how not only different ingredients, but also the different experience of single masons, made possible the development of a variety of plastering techniques. Thickness for example is very much related to the quality of the soil and to the added ingredients. In the conservation manual by INTACH it is possible to find instructions on the making of plaster according to its final use71: The mud mortar for plaster in mud walls has to be prepared from local soil. […] The soil has to be well filtered before making mortar, no small size pebbles should be there. The two layer external plaster has to be done by hand, The first layer by throwing mortar on the walls from a distance and when the entire wall is covered, the second layer is applied by rubbing it above the first layer. The internal plaster is layered and applied evenly by a wooden float. For plasters on stone surfaces, the mortar should not be too smooth and it should preferably have 15% of pebbles. These small aggregates help to fill up any gaps on the stone wall. The applying technique is similar to mud walls.

Cement plaster has been often employed recently. One of the issues with its application is that cement is not compatible with mud bricks or mud surfaces in general. The two materials cannot be well combined, therefore an outer layer of cement put on a mud wall would easily come off.

Interview: Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa.

Interview: Mohammad Nizamuddin.

69 Interview: Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa.

70 Interview: Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa.

71 Borah, Conservation… cit., p. 42.

67 68

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After plastering has been completed, the building can be white washed. Lime, kartsi (dkar-rts), for the white wash is obtained from direct grinding of limestone and mixing it with water. Only wealthier households could afford wall paintings or decorated wooden elements: these can be found commonly in the chhotkhang and in some cases in the rapsal room or guest rooms. It is possible to find a coloured parapet that is dyed black in the houses of lay people. Buddhists associate black with lay people, called milakpa, while red dyed parapets used to be made only for monasteries, temples, monks’ houses or for families related to royalty72. A particular kind of decorative parapet is made out of small bundled twigs that are laid on the highest part of the walls on the roof. This element is called spedma (sbed-ma). Twigs are topped, as for a masonry parapet, with slate stones and mud to prevent water from penetrating. The twigs end are carved with three cuts and they can be dyed in black or red. It is said that this type of decoration was inspired by the habit of the villagers who store hay and twigs all around their rooftops. This horizontal band of stacked grass contrasts with the verticality of the walls, becoming a ‘natural’ cornice and a horizontal end of the construction. The band creates a colour contrast: a darker segment contrasting with the white-washed wall. Starting from this ornamental arrangement, twigs have been transformed in a permanent decoration that also works as a parapet when completed with a stone coping.

Stairs Stone staircases, rdoskas, are mainly used on the outside of the house or to connect the ground floor to the main living quarters internally. Other examples of stone staircases are found, connecting the terraces to the rooftop but in general ladders are mainly used for this purpose. Ladders, shraska (sras-ka), are used inside the house or to directly reach the rooftop from the outside. Since wood and space are scarce, shraska is the most functional piece of equipment for moving from floor to floor. A ladder can be made with two trunks or half trunks connected by split willow sticks fixed to the main structure using wooden nails or metal nails. Wooden staircases are used inside the house and they can be mainly of two types. A whole trunk can be notched to carve steps into it, and this is also a way to obtain a quite steep ladder. The more comfortable wooden staircase is that made of wooden planks, spanglep (spangleb), which can be joined using wooden connections or nailed to longer planks forming the vertical structure. Riser and tread are not made according to a fixed proportion. Risers are often very high so the stair can quickly reach the upper level without taking much space. Handrails might be fitted when extra wood is available. Nowadays it is common to have wooden or metal handrails, especially installed to embellish the staircase leading to the main entrance.

72

Kaplanian, Les Ladakhi… cit., p. 141.

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list of interviews

Abdul Ghani Sheikh Historian, Leh Amchi Skarma Riba Gonpa Mason-Carpenter-Doctor-Astrologer, Kanji Dorjay Gyaltsan Byathangpa Mason, Skyurbuchan Fakir Mohammad Khan Mason, Padum Konchok Tsering Solpon â&#x20AC;&#x153;Norbu Tundupâ&#x20AC;?

Mason, Sakti Meme Amchi Mason-Doctor, Pipiting Mohammad Nizamuddin Mason, Padum Sonam Tundup: Carpenter, Skyurbuchan Tashi Tsering Hasara Mason, Kyagar Tsering Tundup Shiachiopa Mason, Hundar Tsewang Norbu Sergarpa Mason, Sumur Tundup Namgyal Manepa Mason, Phuk Pochey Tundup Paljor Gonpapa Khangbu Mason, Hemis Shukpachan Kacho Mumtaz Ali Khan Yogma Kharbu

Finito di stampare per conto di didapress Dipartimento di Architettura UniversitĂ degli Studi di Firenze Aprile 2018

High Altitude Houses is a first comprehensive study on the domestic architecture of Ladakh which analyses its many and varied aspects.

The monograph is based on the master thesis: “A Fading Legacy: Ladakh’s Vernacular Architecture” and a 8 months mission in Ladakh over two years. The research starts from an overview of the environmental, socio-cultural and historical factors which influenced life in this Himalayan region. Settlements and buildings were accordingly shaped and evolved in this cross-cultural area through the centuries. The house is a multifunctional artefact, which materializes people’s needs and which has been in a process of transformation. The house is therefore examined not only in relation to the past, but according to the many changes, particularly hastened in the last three to four decades. The domestic spaces are investigated according to their functions, different usages and location. The house as a whole is also read through its symbolical meanings. A large section of the research is dedicated to the study of the construction techniques and materials, to the structural elements and building components supported by a corpus of interviews carried out in several Ladakhi villages with local masons and on building sites. The aim of the study is not to focus only on the architecture of the house itself, but to delineate its multiple facets through a more holistic approach.

Edoardo Paolo Ferrari is an architect graduated from the University of Florence in 2016. He is committed to the study of vernacular architecture, local materials and natural construction technologies. He always pairs theory with on-field research and work on building sites. His focuses on architecture are plural and include: history, art, environment, religion and anthropology. He is an eager traveler that lived in India and studied also in Turkey at the Istanbul Technical University, now in the process of preparing for a PhD research. Drawing, photography and sculpture have been his long time passions practiced along with the academic study of architecture and design.

ISBN 978-88-3338-028-5

ISBN 978-88-3338-028-5

€ 25,00 9 788833 380285