Scampering Spaces: A Heterotopic Reading of Hanumandhoka Durbar Square

Abstract

The Hanumandhoka Durbar Square (HDS) has been established as a monument in the history of Nepal. With time, the HDS changes and adapts. The dominant spatial action in the HDS utilizes the Heterotopias to isolate the objects, activities and individuals that are considered strange in order to maintain the originality and stability of the dominant art and cultural forms. Heterotopias help maintain the spatial stability as a self-organizing system. The HDS provides shifting sites of reflection and distance within the system that increases the capacity of the HDS to change and adapt over time. Therefore, a better understanding of modern heterotopia is essential for a better understanding of how the spaces like the HDS changes and adapts over time despite various interventions caused by the natural disasters like the earthquake. This research proposes and examines that scampering features of space utilize control mechanisms and maintain the originality of the spatial practice and its performativity in heterotopic forms. Conservation of the HDS as human property by UNESCO is just a safeguarding of the outer structure yet it cannot prevent the destructions and interventions. What remains intact and steady is the local people's contact with the HDS. The art, literature and the cultural performances are the vital forces to retain the memory of the space more than the UNESCO's conservation does. Hence, the public's contact with the HDS retains the original memory of the space despite of the realizedvarieties in it.The cultural understanding is employed to maintain the stability of the HDS. However, with time, there is evidence that the heterotopia itself will reconfigure in its present form due to various reasons like the natural disaster. Therefore, the spaces keep scampering in the HDS site.