During the very short history of urbanisation in modem Nepal, remarkable changes have taken place. There were less than 10 towns in the 1960s: today the number exceeds 30. About nine per cent of the country's population is now urban-based, up from about three per cent in 1960. The annual rate of urban growth now stands at eight per cent. Urbanisation has exposed Nepalis to the era of jets and global communications and dramatically increased their mobility, changed their attitudes and, also, led to shifts in the design and building of houses they live in. Unfortunately. not all the changes in Nepali urban housing have been for the better.
Most professionally designed houses in Nepal are so culturally unsuitable that the owners make changes almost as soon as construction is complete. Problems include low insulation of thin brick walls, infiltration of winter cold through large glass windows also shows a bias for the modern and a mindless abandonment of the tested and the tried. Professionals, architects, engineers and others, must change their technical orientation and be more open to locally suitable technologies that are culturally valid and functionally efficient.
Technology choice in the design and construction of housing in the Third World may be roughly divided into three categories: traditional, modern and "intermediate". Hasan Fathy of Egypt is the well-known promoter of vernacular design. In Nepal, architect Ramesh Manandhar has championed the cause of reviving traditional systems with an emphasis on building with mud and other indigenous materials. Inspired by the use of mud walls in Nepali housing, Manandhar has tirelessly experimented with the construction of workable mud domes. Certain prototypes were built in Gorkha and elsewhere, but there has been no widespread application as yet. Mud domes, which are not traditional, could yet provide an excellent roof construction technique for Kathmandu builders.
Choice of modern construction technology is favoured by architects and planners in the mainstream of the profession. Examples can be seen in the representative works of architects Narayan Bhattarai, Bijay Burathoki, Shankar Rimal and others, including previous works of this author. Ritual pioneered modern building design in Nepal, with works such as the Royal Nepal Academy hall in Kathmandu and the factory and housing for the Janakpur Cigarette Factory in Janakpur, as well as numerous other institutional and residential buildings. He initiated the extensive use of concrete, machine-made bricks, steel, glass and other modern materials. Pre-stressed concrete portal frames of more than 30 metres were used for the first time in the Academy building. In many residential buildings, Rimal has used bold new designs such as hyperbolic paraboloid roofs and large concrete cantilevered beams.