Mobilisation of living heritage for community-led recovery

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake caused widespread destruction and loss of life across Nepal, with traditional settlements in the Kathmandu Valley among the hardest hit. State support for urban areas arrived only a year later, leaving communities to organise recovery. 

In this vacuum, alternative, community-led approaches emerged. This included those in Thecho, a historic town with 10,086 residents (2011 census).

Thecho is home to one of the Valley’s Indigenous communities, the Newar. Here, residents partnered with Lumanti Support Group for Shelter, a national NGO focused on housing rights and community development, to implement a recovery programme grounded in ‘living heritage’.

Lumanti’s approach built on relationships developed over years, particularly with the Thecho Mahila Jagaran Savings and Credit Cooperative, established in 2008 and a respected local institution. The women-led organisation, with over 3,000 members emerged as a central actor – mobilising residents, supporting local decision making and creating a bridge between technical teams and the community.

Connecting people to place and spaces

Living heritage in Thecho refers to a system of community-based knowledge, practices and relationships that connect people to place – weaving tangible spaces with intangible traditions sustained through everyday practices. 

The town holds its layered histories through its distinct Newar heritage forms, from courtyards, temples and iconic ‘rest shelters’ (falchaa) to festivals, rituals and traditional social systems, many of which remain in active use. Rather than treating heritage as static or commemorative, the recovery process sought to preserve these practices and spaces, while adapting them to contemporary community needs.

This approach is evident in the two communal infrastructure projects below. Here living heritage was mobilised to enable collective action, strengthen community agency and support negotiations with authorities, while grounding recovery in cultural continuity and local knowledge.

The Info-Falchaa

The falchaa is a traditional pavilion found throughout Newar settlements. In Thecho, these pavilions served as gathering spots, spaces for rituals and festivals, and shelters anchoring public life. Many were damaged during the earthquake, disrupting both everyday and ceremonial use.

The Info-Falchaa was a pilot project to reimagine and rebuild one of these pavilions through a collaboration between Lumanti, the Urban Risk Lab at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the women’s cooperative and local residents. Modern materials and techniques were discreetly integrated with traditional features such as carved wooden columns to improve resilience. 

Solar lighting made the space usable in the evenings, and it quickly grew popular for elderly residents to gather for bhajans (prayers). It also became an information hub, hosting disaster management training.

Further community discussions gave the falchaa a new role. In response to post-earthquake water scarcity, a tank and bio-sand filter were built beneath its platform to supply 50 households, managed by a local user committee. Although access to piped water later reduced reliance, renewed scarcity prompted the community to successfully negotiate its revival.

The Info-Falchaa provides a powerful example of community-led reconstruction and the innovative reuse of traditional typologies. It shows how living heritage can be reimagined to meet contemporary needs while retaining cultural, social and spatial significance. 

It fostered collective action through user committees formed to manage the new communal resource, strengthening community agency, while opening new networks with local authorities and global institutions.

The Pingal area

The Pingal area is the largest open space in Thecho, home to a temple, pond, viewpoint, a Falchaa and stone shrines of deities linked to various clans. The site plays a central role in community life, hosting festivals, processions and daily rituals. After the earthquake, it fell into disrepair, limiting its use for both religious and social life.

Recovery was shaped through a participatory design workshop led by Lumanti and the women’s cooperative. Involvement of external urban practitioners from the Community Architects Network offered trans-national solidarity and shared learnings. 

For instance, Hunnarshala brought their experience from the post-earthquake reconstruction of Gujarat, informing Lumanti’s approach in Nepal. Through this co-design process, residents identified cleaning and repaving as key priorities. 

The women’s cooperative cleaning campaign attracted strong community participation, reflecting the site’s cultural significance. This collective act became a way for residents to assert what they valued and directly communicate their needs to the wider municipal body. 

Their proposals were approved, and upgrades such as repaving and creating a garden were implemented by the community with technical support from Lumanti. These efforts helped strengthen the case for further public investment and prioritisation for renovation by the state.

The Pith Temple anchoring the site was a place of worship for many, and it was this devotion that inspired sustained collective effort. Given the site’s sacred nature, collaboration with several local guthi was essential. A guthi is a traditional Newar social organisation, responsible for managing temples, rituals and festivals, holding cultural authority and legitimacy in religious matters. 

Their involvement added symbolic weight and tangible support through donations and labour. By centring their religious knowledge and securing their approval, the project remained grounded in the community’s spiritual and cultural practices.

Although progress was slow, the Pingal site is now a vibrant part of town, attracting residents and visitors alike. 

The project demonstrates how shared cultural and spiritual values, tied to tangible spaces, can be mobilised to advocate for long-term investment in public spaces. It also highlights how traditional institutions, such as the guthi system, support grassroots mobilisation and serve as valuable community resources.

Broader takeaways

These two projects illustrate how community mobilisation was made possible through the activation of living heritage. Temple squares and falchaa, hosting daily rituals and festivals, hold deep significance tied to memory, identity and belonging, making them powerful catalysts.

The recognition of heritage elements as communal assets, sustained through shared care and ownership, allowed them to be leveraged during negotiations and created new networks. Even when applied to relatively small projects, the framework inspired long-term collective action and strengthened community agency.

This mobilisation was enabled by Lumanti’s collaboration with trusted, locally-embedded institutions. The women’s cooperative and the guthi brought different but complementary forms of place-based knowledge to steer the recovery. Their status and neighbourhood cluster-based organisational structures allowed for rapid coordination, wide reach and decisions aligned with residents’ needs. These institutions acted as anchors and enablers, ensuring recovery remained grounded in Thecho’s social and cultural fabric.

The process disrupted not only technocratic recovery models, but also the broader hierarchies embedded in social structures. Rather than external experts directing the process, Lumanti positioned themselves as facilitators, supporting community leadership and co-producing solutions with local actors. 

As a respected local body, the women’s cooperative amplified the role of women as effective organisers, negotiators and decision makers.

In the vacuum left by the state, these examples illustrate how living heritage mobilised collective action and enabled a collaborative framework for reconstruction, strengthening community agency that endures well beyond recovery.

With thanks to Shristina Shrestha (Lumanti Support Group for Shelter) and Beatrice De Carli (Architecture Sans Frontières UK) for contributing to the development of this insight.