Niels Gutschow, born in 1941 in Hamburg as the son of an architect, first came to Nepal in 1962. He studied architecture in Darmstadt and returned to Bhaktapur in 1971 as a member of a team to restore the Pujarimath.
During the 1970s his research focused on Urban Space and Ritual; later he shifted toward architectural surveys which materialised in two major publications (among many others),
'The Nepalese Caitya: 1500 Years of Buddhist Votive Architecture in the Kathmandu Valley' (1997) and 'Architecture of the Newars: A History of Building Typologies and Details in Nepal' (2011).
For three decades, Niels lived between residences in Tahaja (near Bhaktapur) and Abtsteinach (Germany). Since 2003, he has been an Honorary Professor at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. He supported the project in its formative years as the head of the architectural documentation team.

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