Niels Gutschow

Über Niels Gutschow

Niels Gutschow, born in Hamburg in 1941, studied architecture in Darmstadt and completed his PhD on Japanese cities in 1973. He worked as a planner and a municipal conservation officer in the 1970s, before turning to the ­history of architecture and planning and architectural anthro­pology. Since 1980, he has also been devoted to the history of ­urban planning in the wake of the Second World War. He first came to Nepal in 1962 and worked on the architecture and ­urban rituals of Nepal and India. In 1970, he visited Lower ­Mustang for the first time, before returning in 1988 to start an extensive survey of Chörten, focussing on villages such as Kag, Kyinga, Dzar, and Te. Surveys followed in ­Sindhupalcok (1976), Dhading (1982–2018), Humla (1990), Dolpo (1990), Mugu (1986 and 1998), and Upper Mustang (1992). Recently, he served as chief technical advisor in an effort to preserve the temples on Patan Darbar Square which had collapsed in the 2015 earthquake. His publications to date include: The Nepalese Caitya: 1500 Years of Buddhist Votive Architecture in the Kathmandu Valley (1997); Architecture of the Newars: A History of Building Typologies and Details in Nepal (2013); and (with J. Düwel) A Blessing in Disguise: War and Town Planning in Europe 1940–1945. Gutschow lives and works in Abtsteinach, Germany and Bhaktapur, Nepal.