The New Attic Bar in Tangal, Kathmandu: A Purano Buigal Reimagined
(Text and Photographs by Veneeta Singha)
An oasis is an expanse of nature just as it is one of human ingenuity and comfort. Nepal’s geophysical architecture is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Illustrative representations of this unique natural tradition can be found, although intermittently, across the country. As one reflects on those valuable influences that provided and safeguarded, one cannot help but rediscover the ethereal in both the real and imagined structural environment.
The buigal in Nepali life is an urban story and the storyteller’s special denouement — an urban narrative that weaves its way into a child’s imagination and, equally, a community’s joint respite. A buigal when revisited can be a surreal familiarity, a temporal awakening. A walk into the New Attic Bar in Tangal is a calming treat as the doorway artfully recreates a now distant memory with a play of material and shape. Here too, the front lawn is among Kathmandu’s most inviting yet enclosed tributes to nature’s intellect. The Bar, on the other hand, is built around this pivot — architecture in Kashtamandap City has finally begun to reflect the clear, concise meanings that were sewn into the epithet over time. The New Attic Bar is a perfect expression of this return, remembrance and renewal.
Elements of history, tradition, livelihood norms and astounding design intelligence coalesce to complete this space — Kathmandu’s reply to the New Urbanism Movement allows us all an opportunity to look to the horizon with restful grace. Interestingly, the fusion of different eras and styles is welded together unassumingly as the interior spaces become visible. Burnished leather and lamps reintroduce the medieval world and the attic emerges through the wooden beams and ensconced windows. Sitting at the buigal overlooking the area below is akin to reliving the historic Nepali basobas but in the here and now. Indeed, the Etruscan shades were as much a matter of scale as they were a matter of antiquity.
