The 2015 earthquakes in Nepal destroyed 600,000 homes across affected areas of the country. Most of the damage was caused in rural Nepal where houses are built in the traditional Nepali building style out of rocks and mud. Lacking reinforcement and binding materials, the rock-mud-and-mortar houses have a poor chance at withstanding an earthquake, particularly of high magnitude.

In the district of Sindhupalchok, the French nonprofit partners Architecture Sans Frontieres (ASF) and Architecture & Development (A&D) are working to help isolated village communities rebuild their homes, schools and communal facilities. Altogether 2,501 dwellings are in the three Village District Communities (VDCs), out of which up to 150 of the most damaged but repairable homes will be selected for retrofitting.  Miyamoto International Nepal has been contracted to support all technical aspects of this project, called the Retrofitting Campaign.

Technical support provided includes a year-long, in-classroom and on-the-job intensive training of a group of engineers who are in the field conducting damage assessments and developing rock-mud-mortar house retrofit designs, and finally supervising the quality of implementing the retrofits while training masons in the new construction methods. The most technically challenging component Miyamoto faced was finding retrofit solutions that are effective both in providing safe homes for families living in traditional rural dwellings, while also cost effective and replicable. This means using material that are inexpensive and easily available locally.

Ultimately, the aim of the Retrofit Campaign is to develop technical sustainable solutions for retrofitting these types of housing structures that can be applied in other Village District Communities with the long-term goal of building greater earthquake resilience in rural Nepal.

This project is currently on hold while the government works to adopt a national retrofit model for damaged village repairs.