ABSTRACT
Stretched across the eastern Himalayas, between India and China, the landlocked Kingdom of Bhutan has only recently begun to engage in contemporary architectural conservation practice. Bhutan stands out among the nations of Asia, if not the world, as a country that is especially concerned with protection, promotion and safeguarding of its unique cultural heritage as a matter of not only national pride, but also of national preservation. Vajrayana Buddhism deeply inuences all aspects of life in the kingdom today, in particular its architectural and artistic traditions.1 Bhutan’s economy is based primarily on agriculture and the export of hydroelectric power, with tourism playing an increasingly signicant role following decades of a highly regulated relationship with the industry, and a deliberate strategy to manage the number and types of tourists that visit. Two-thirds of Bhutan’s population is rural, and the country has historically coped with limited infrastructure largely owing to the country’s mountainous topography, making movement of people and materials around the country dicult.2 As the kingdom continues on its modernization path – with a growing, increasingly welleducated urban population and a road network connecting all 205 gewogs (counties) – it does so on its own terms, oering a compelling contrast to the typical development patterns of its Asian neighbors, particularly with regards to architectural conservation.
