Gotz Hagmuller of Kuthu Math

By Ian Alsop

Gotz Hagmuller in his living room

In 1748, on a Thursday in the monsoon month of Asadh, the Vaikunthanathi (adherent of the god Vaikunthanath) Ram Giri Gosai made an important donation of various parcels of land to support the Rudra Math and the temple within it dedicated to Lord Shiva as Bhaneshvara. The math (pronounced `mutt'), a residence or monastery for Hindu holy men, was founded during the reign of Ranajita Malla (1722-69), the last Malla king of Bhaktapur, some twenty years before the valley came under the control of King Prithvi Narayan Shah (r. 1743-75; reigned in Kathmandu valley from 1769), the founder of Nepal's present ruling house.

The eighteenth century inscription recording the donation, carved on a stone stele affixed to the front of the house, prescribed how the income from the donated land should be used: to obtain materials to perform daily worship of the god Bhaneshvar, to periodically feed the poor, for annual and seasonal celebrations and services, and to provide food and residence for the donor, his family and visiting Hindu holy men from India or from elsewhere in Nepal (Kashinath Tamot, The Inscription of Kuthu Math, draft, July 2001).

Some two and a half centuries later, in 1980, part of the math became the home of a dignitary visiting from even further afield. Gotz Hagmuller, a distinguished Austrian architect who had recently come to Nepal to take over the direction of the German-government funded Bhaktapur Development Project (BDP), a major restoration effort, moved into the upper storeys with his wife Ludmilla Hungerhuber and began restoration and renovation of the house.

The living room in Kuthu Math

Although identified in the inscription as `Rudra Math', the building eventually became known simply as Kuthu Math (Newari for `lower math'), in association with the nearby Tathu Math (`upper math') which was founded in 1768. It is one of thirteen maths in Bhaktapur, a Hindu town where this type of building is slightly more common than in the other two major towns of the valley, Kathmandu and Patan. Kuthu Math, like most of the maths in Bhaktapur, is built in a quadrangle around a stone-paved courtyard. The structure can be tenuously compared with the Buddhist vihara or bahal, which is far more common in Patan and Kathmandu.

Where the bahals house Buddhist communities said to be descended from what were originally monastic communities, the maths housed distinguished Hindu holy men or sannyasins, their families and visiting pilgrims. `I have always called it a pilgrim's hostel', remarks Hagmuller, `I suppose because I myself am sort of a pilgrim'. Nowadays the function of hostel has largely been lost, and many of the maths are de facto residences.

Erich Theophile in his home overlooking Darbar Square, Patan

How Kuthu Math came to house this architect and his family is a story of the changes that have come to this ancient Himalayan kingdom and how the Kathmandu valley and its fabled Newar towns have exerted a powerful fascination for many Western visitors over the last thirty years. The Newars have one of the most prolific artistic traditions of the Himalayas. The wealth of monuments that dot the landscape are the work of Newari master builders, sculptors and painters. They were renowned as migrant artists, willing to move, often for years or a lifetime, to a neighbouring kingdom or religious centre to work their magic in paint, bronze or wood for king or lama. Many Newar artists who went to Tibet ended up staying and becoming part of the social fabric. Now Nepal itself has drawn a select group of migrants to the valley home from which these artists of old set out. Several of the Western architects, designers and builders who have come to help in the kingdom's efforts to preserve its ancient architecture have, like their Newar counterparts in centuries past, stayed on in the country they came to serve and grew to love. This group includes not only Hagmuller himself, but colleagues from Austria and neighbouring Germany, notably Niels Gutschow, who worked on one of the first restoration and conservation projects, and Thomas Schrom, a builder who joined Hagmuller in his most recent project, the Patan Museum. There is also John Sanday, an Englishman who made his first visit in 1970 and carried out the early and ambitious project to restore the Kathmandu royal square, and Erich Theophile, an American architect who is director of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), a foundation dedicated to the restoration and conservation of the old public buildings of Patan (see the article by Theophile and the interview with John Ford, Chairman of the Trust Board, in this issue). Beyond making Nepal his home, Hagmuller made a further commitment when he decided to try to find an old building in Bhaktapur to live in:

Not long after I came to Bhaktapur, I got the idea of renting an old building to live in. The maths were natural possibilities, but the mahants were reluctant to rent. They had lost quite a lot through the land reforms and were suspicious of any other possible infringement. They were also reluctant on caste grounds to rent to foreigners. I pursued the Sukhuldhoka Math (a wonderful building on the main Bhaktapur road which is still unoccupied) but that did not work out. But the Kuthu Math did.

The accommodating mahant of Kuthu Math agreed to let Hagmuller and Hungerhuber occupy the top floors, while he retained the bottom floor. The long lease that he had taken, allowed him to repair, renovate and restore the building. Beyond maintaining the building, which is always challenging with a structure of this age, he has made several changes and improvements. The large window of one of the courtyard facades had been destroyed in the great earthquake of 1934, and Hagmuller found a replacement from about the same period for the makeshift modern windows that had been installed. He raised the roof of the main room on the top floor, originally the baithak, or communal meeting and dining room, now the living room, and built two terraces above, one on the rooftop. Eventually, he also secured the use of the garden behind the house, and restored and built two small wings that look out onto the garden.

Over the years he cleaned and worked to restore the building's most important cultural treasure, a small room, originally used as the mahant's reception room, adorned with paintings showing various episodes from the story of Krishna and other Hindu themes (see the article by Heike Pfund in this issue). This is one of the very few extant painted rooms in the valley from the Malla period (1200-1767).

The house is filled with extraordinary details and surprises which reflect the painstaking approach that Hagmuller takes with his restoration projects. Thomas Schrom said of him: `He's very detail oriented; if he feels it is necessary he will reinvent the wheel on a daily basis! For instance, for the Patan Museum project we designed an entire tile factory to produce the floor tiles that he felt were needed. And of course those tiles are now in great demand.' This attention to detail can be seen in wall niches containing artefacts that fit them exactly, hand-crafted lighting fixtures casting a perfectly calculated glow, and chests of drawers, with handmade brass pulls, shaped to fit in the most erratic corner spaces. The interior is a smorgasbord of warm colours, glowing finishes, indirect light, doorways leading to mysterious spaces, all a kind of wonderland. Major elements of a traditional Newar house, such as fired tile floors, carved pillars and windows, and banquettes designed for leaning out to view the street or courtyard life below, have been lovingly preserved.

Hagmuller was perhaps the first of the architect-restorers who elected to live in and among the monuments he has dedicated his days to preserving and restoring. Perhaps in part inspired by him, others also chose to live in the old houses of the neighbourhoods in which they work. Notable amongst them is Erich Theophile, who first came to Nepal in the late 1980s, looking to volunteer with Hagmuller, whose work he had heard of before coming. `It was such an opportunity, to come here and stand on the shoulders of Gotz and Niels [Gutschow, Hagmuller's colleague]. It was such an attractive life they led - researching, making films, restoring ancient buildings, living in beautiful houses.' Theophile himself lives in an elegant pair of neighbouring houses that overlook the splendours of Patan's Darbar Square. One, which he only recently managed to take over, houses the KVPT's offices. Thomas Schrom also lives in Patan. Although his house is not particularly old, it is built in a transitional traditional style and overlooks the ancient Buddhist community of Nag Bahal. This has allowed him a culturally rich commute to work at the museum. For Schrom, working in Nepal was a dream come true. `I first met Gotz and Ludmilla when we were all staying in the Bhaktapur Guest House in 1979. I had just driven to Nepal in an ancient Volkswagen Beetle. When I later heard from my brother in Vienna that there was an advertised opening for work in his project here in Nepal, I was drooling!' He came back in 1991 and has been in Patan ever since. That meeting in the Bhaktapur Guest House was significant in another way, for it was there that Hagmuller and Hungerhuber first met. They were later married in the Bhaktapur Municipality, and Hungerhuber eventually became a mainstay of the Vajra Hotel's drama troupe, whose annual play is a major event in the valley's cultural calendar.

Hagmuller's dedication to the preservation and restoration of the ancient buildings of the valley towns, is also apparent in the legacy of the work he has done here. The BDP and the Patan Museum project have both had a profound impact on their respective towns and their inhabitants. Both projects were at certain times in their history controversial, but both in the end must be judged as rousing successes.

Hagmuller came to the BDP in 1979 at a transitional period. One of the largest and most ambitious cultural restoration and assistance programmes undertaken in Asia, the project had as its scope the entire town of Bhaktapur. When he arrived, the project was run from outside the town with little local input:

We changed the way the project worked with a more grassroots approach, inviting local participation via local ward committees set up in each ward...previously all the managers were bussed in from Kathmandu, creating resentment among the residents of Bhaktapur. But the project of course changed in response to these pressures, the office in Pujari Math was used for assemblies of the local people, rather than just being used for officer meetings, and the room used to fill with jyapus [farmers] of the individual toles, who would join in lively discussions'.

The BDP, which Hagmuller ran from 1979 to 1984, eventually transformed Bhaktapur and the life of its residents. Narayan Man Bijukche, a Member of Parliament from the Nepal Peasant and Workers Party (NPWP), one of several Communist parties in Nepal and the most important political force in Bhaktapur, credits foreign experts such as Hagmuller with awakening the residents of the town to their cultural heritage:

We are thankful to our foreign friends who helped show the value of Newar culture. Sometimes it is necessary to have people from outside show us the value of the things that we are familiar with. Now the people in Bhaktapur understand as well, but it has not always been easy. Each change has taken a lot of time, many meetings, a lot of attempts to persuade the people. It took a long time to get the people to agree to restrict traffic on the roads in the city, but of course now most people like it.

Hagmuller and Bijukche now occasionally meet on the streets of Bhaktapur, and enjoy discussing the various issues facing the town and its future. In the mid-1990s, the NPWP-controlled Bhaktapur Municipality made the decision to charge a fee for entering the town. Bijukche recalls:

In 1969-70 I went to China and toured there. At that time, there was no charge to visit the various historic sites. But when I returned in 1990, I saw that they were beginning to charge quite high fees to the tourists to visit the historical and archaeological sites, and I thought this might be a good solution for Bhaktapur. I saw that the foreign visitors did not mind, as they understood that these were international treasures.

Hagmuller remembers that the idea of charging a fee for entrance had been mooted by the BDP but never implemented. Now the funds from these fees go towards further restoration and preservation work, and the system seems to be working well. Hagmuller gives the municipality high marks: `The municipality is doing many things very well in Bhaktapur on their own; for instance, the new reconstruction of the small temple in Sukhul Dhoka is excellent. Their use of materials shows real understanding and the standard of workmanship is high.' The idea of a charge for entering the historic districts has caught on in the valley, and now Patan, Svayambhu and Boudhanath all charge fees, and it was recently announced that tourists will be charged to enter the historic Hanuman Dhoka area in downtown Kathmandu. Certainly if these programmes are run the way Bhaktapur is, the system will be a great success. The modern visitor to Bhaktapur is transported to an earlier way of life as he wanders through the cobbled and brick-paved streets, lined on either side by marvellous buildings in brick and elaborate woodwork. The people of the town clearly show the pride they feel in their traditions, which are kept very much alive. One has the feeling that the woman in her red-and-black sari drawing water from a Malla period sunken tap or hiti is entirely conscious of the spell she casts on tourist passers-by, who join the residents in enjoying a town rid of the crazed traffic and attendant pollution of Kathmandu.

While the BDP concentrated on an entire town, the Patan Museum Project, which Hagmuller directed from 1986 until the museum's opening in 1997, focused on a single royal complex and an existing institution, the Patan Bronze Museum, which contained a small but excellent collection of Nepalese bronze sculptures housed in the old and quite dilapidated palace buildings. Austrian Development and Cooperation, the international development arm of the Austrian government, agreed to fund the restoration and renovation of the museum. Hagmumller took on the task of designing the museum complex, joined by Mary Slusser, who undertook the task of researching the entire existing collection, selecting pieces for display and arranging the exhibitions. Her thoughtful, didactic presentation has won praise. Jal Krishna Shrestha, the museum's director, says: `Mary Slusser's labelling is an important part of the appeal of the museum. Potatoes are potatoes, but well-prepared, tasty ones are much more palatable. The informative, interesting labels add so much to the visitor's experience.' Joined by Schrom and several other collaborators, this team has transformed the museum into a gem.

Hagmuller made some radical adjustments, particularly to the eastern wing of the building, where he replaced elements of the original facade with modern equivalents. In the interior, some walls were removed to make room for more spacious galleries. The roof, originally of the traditional mud-and-tile variety, was replaced with a tiled roof on an airy metal framework. Perhaps most striking, in a deliberate statement of modern imitation of traditional design, are the pillars of the eastern exterior facade made of rolled steel in a modern adaptation of an old pattern. Traditionalists shuddered, those in favour of preserving the `historical fabric' of an old building at all costs cringed, and there was a general outcry, to the extent that there were calls to shut the project down at a meeting with a visiting group from the International Commission on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). But Hagmuller remarks:

This type of work always involves striking compromises between necessity and desirability. The rules can only define the parameters. The `rules' were made by bureaucrats and art historians, not by practitioners who have to deal with practical problems. Practitioners are less apt to write about what they do, they just do it - and so the writing, and theory, is left to others. The east wing was totally destroyed during the 30s earthquake and was rebuilt sloppily in the then prevalent Rana style - it was already a modern construction, and had to be rebuilt because it was structurally too weak. So we took the liberty of incorporating these clearly modern elements. In reconstruction theory, this is generally allowed, if you make sure to show clearly that the elements are modern, which of course we did. We were trying to make a statement - this is not a historical facade. It follows the spirit of the fenestration of the Malla facades of the building, but is an eclectic mixture of Malla, Rana and modern.

The project continued and the result is, all but very few agree, stunning in its impact. It has been called the finest small museum in South Asia and has been cited as a model for other museums. In a radical departure from other Nepalese institutions, the museum is run as an independent entity with its own budget. Another innovation is the entrance fee of about US$3.50 which the museum charges foreign tourists, a small sum by Western standards but still providing a healthy income for upkeep and improvement. As a result the museum is impeccably maintained. Jal Krishna Shrestha remarked:

Other projects come, do their work, and then leave. But with this Austrian project they are concerned even after it is finished. Gotz comes many times to give advice and comments on how we are running things. I have learned so much from Gotz. Of course we have our disagreements, but he is always trying to do the best thing for the museum. It is like his child.

Clearly proud of the extraordinary institution he is in charge of, Shrestha noted how everyone loves the experience of the museum, particularly architects:

In Newari we have a saying, `Only a snake sees the snake's feet', which really means it takes an expert to appreciate another expert's work, and in the same way, we find that architects really appreciate this museum, regardless of whether they are Nepali or foreign. They often want to know who was the architect involved.

In recognition of his services in historic preservation, Hagmuller was awarded the Gorkha Daksina Bahu (`The Right Arm of Gorkha'), the highest decoration bestowed on foreigners in Nepal, by His Late Majesty King Birendra earlier this year. Rather than resting on his laurels, he is off on another project, again funded by the Austrians, to restore the glories of the lovely pavilion-dotted garden of Keshar Mahal, at the edge of the packed tourist quarter of Thamel, which no doubt he will transform into an oasis of beauty fully worthy of its name, `The Garden of Dreams'.