Bhutanese Architecture

Bhutanese architecture is a fundamentally Buddhist building tradition encompassing two main varieties, the fortress-monastery dzongs that have served as religious, administrative and defensive centers since the seventeenth century, and everyday buildings, with secular lordly houses emerging as a distinct style in the late nineteenth century during a period of relative peace. Its major building types include dzongs, generally single-story temples known as lhakhang marked by high thresholds, red stripes and gilded copper roofs, monasteries called gonpa built in either cluster or dzong form, and multi-story courtyard residences resembling chalets, often with an upper-floor chapel. Traditional construction relies on wooden frames combined with natural materials, with western Bhutanese buildings typically using wattle and daub interior walls, rammed earth exterior walls, and stone and earth retaining walls, built without drawn plans and without nails or iron bars. A 1998 royal decree mandates that all buildings carry multicolored wood frontages, small arched windows and sloping shingled wood roofs with decorative cornices, tongue and groove doors, and windows carrying curved trefoil motifs that vary in size by story for structural soundness.