On Studio Nyandak’s third field trip to Zanskar, we were accompanied by an international team of experts in the fields of heritage conservation, art history, historical geography, preservation engineering and structural engineering.

Studio Nyandak hosted a 2-day conference with international speakers in the fields of engineering, architectural preservation, and historical geography in collaboration with the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Gangkyi, Dharamsala.

Studio Nyandak recently travelled to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Maryland with Prof. Karl Ryavec and U2 expert Lin Xu to obtain and digitize the U2 spy plane images of Tibet taken in 1950s and 1960s. This is part of our Tibet from above research. This research trip was funded by the generous support from the Rubin Museum’s 2024 Rubin x Research.

We were able to obtain more than 8,000 images of Tibetan plateau spanning from western Himalaya to the Tso Ngönpo (Tib: མཚོ་སྔོན་པོ་, Wylie: mtsho sngon po, Eng: Lake Kokonor, Chinese: 青海湖) in Amdo region in eastern Tibet. We are working on processing and geolocating the images and will make them publicly available.

Studio Nyandak was selected to receive the International Campaign for Tibet’s 2024 Rowell Fund for Tibet grant to support documentation, research and preservation of Zanskar’s Buddhist monasteries and nunneries.

This seed money will allow us to obtain radiocarbon dating of wood samples from these monasteries and nunneries that were built around 1,000 years ago. Determining the exact ages of these structures will help us better understand the history of these important Buddhist sites.

Studio Nyandak won a small grant from the Tibet Fund to design and build an earthquake shake/shock table in Dharamsala. This grant is in support of our ongoing research project, Low-cost Earthquake Resilient Structures.

Our project focuses on conducting comprehensive risk assessments and developing innovative earthquake resilience interventions for key anchor institutions within Dharamsala, the heart of the India’s Tibetan exile community. Situated at the foothills of the seismically active Himalayas, Dharamsala is inherently at high risk for earthquakes due to its location near tectonic fault lines and its sloping terrain. Home to roughly 10,000 Tibetans, it serves as the central hub of the Tibetan exile community, amplifying the potential impact of seismic events.

Many essential community buildings in Dharamsala—including schools, hospitals, museums and monasteries—are non-engineered and vulnerable to seismic events. We are developing low-cost, high-impact retrofitting solutions that are locally adaptable, ensuring the safety and resilience of critical infrastructure while safeguarding the community’s cultural and social fabric.

Our Studio Nyandak Dharamsala team recently visited the Tibetan Children’s Village school at Bir and Mewoen Tsuglag Petoen School in Dharamsala to give a career counseling presentation. Our team members talked about their work at Studio Nyandak and encouraged students to use their education to give back to society!

This work is part of our ongoing collaboration with the TCV School network and our support of the Tibetan community in exile.

Studio Nyandak and Prof. Karl Ryavec were recently awarded a research grant by the Rubin Museum to obtain, analyze and present declassified U-2 spy plane images dating back to late 1950s.

This grant is in support of our ongoing research project, Tibet from Above, which sheds light on the profound changes to Buddhist and Bonpo monasteries during the Cultural Revolution.

Two team members from our Dharamsala office, Gangchen Dolma and Tsering Yangchen, were selected as fellows for 2024 Columbia University Tibetan Rural Green Business Training and Exchange program. They will travel to the US in October 2024 to learn about sustainability and entrepreneurship.