Wat Phu, Laos
Sacred Temple Complex of Khmer Kings
Nandin Hall before conservation work began.
Wat Phu is highly susceptible to continuous water erosion and suffers from a lack of regular maintenance. For example, Nandin Hall rests on a thick layer of filling material, which made an approximately horizontal area at the foot of the mountain (an archaeological test pit on its west face showed a 1.8 m thickness of anthropic layers of sand and gravel with brick and stone debris). Through the centuries however, this filling has been intensely eroded by the water run-off from the mountain, threatening the foundations and the structural integrity of the building. This erosion is presently continuing, and its disrupting action could be seen in the recent years: it is at its worse on the south part of the building, where the soil has been washed out by more than one meter, exposing the lowest level of foundation and resulting in an important differential settlement (30 cm down) and in the dislocation of the structure.
