John Sanday, one of the leading architectural conservators in Asia, will be at the Faculty of Environmental Design on Thursday, Oct. 2 for a presentation about his work conserving and restoring the Banteay Chhmar Temple in Cambodia.
Sanday is a British architect and regional director of the Global Heritage Fund Asia. He has spent the last 40 years living and working in Nepal, where he has worked on many of the major historic sites in the Kathmandu Valley. He has traveled and worked all over the Asian subcontinent on a wide and varied assortment of historic buildings, ranging from monasteries in the high Himalayas, palaces in India, and in Angkor, Cambodia.
In recognition of his contribution to masterminding training programs and conserving many significant Asian historic buildings and sites, Sanday has been elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London and more was recently awarded by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II an OBE for his contribution to architectural conservation and training, especially in Nepal and Cambodia.
Partnering with the Department of Applied Mathematics (IWR) at Heidelberg University, Germany, Sanday and his team have undertaken the restoration of Banteay Chhmar, a 12th Century Buddhist monastic temple of great significance in the history, religion, and architecture of Cambodia.
Today, Banteay Chhmar is a partial ruin with only about 25 per cent of the original structure still standing. The temple complex is built mainly of large sandstone blocks that are dry laid — there is no mortar in the joints. Sanday and the IWR are discussing the possibility of designing and developing computer software which could, at the touch of a button, reconstruct the 350,000 sandstone blocks of the collapsed temple.
Sanday's presentation at EVDS will focus on both the philosophy, as well as the structural repair and conservation procedures, for such a unique historic monastic complex. He will explore the procedures and philosophy of his 3D digital scanning program, and whether cultural heritage and computing can speak to one another.
Join EVDS in Room PF2165 at 12:00 noon. on Thursday, Oct. 2, for this exceptional opportunity to hear an expert's first-hand perspective on the restoration of one of the key religious centres of the Khmer Kingdom of ancient Cambodia.