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Dzong architecture is used for dzongs, a distinctive type of fortified monastery (, , ) architecture found mainly in Bhutan and Tibet. The architecture is massive in style with towering exterior walls surrounding a complex of , temples, administrative offices, and monks' accommodation.
Typically half of the rooms inside a dzong serve administrative purposes (such as the office of the penlop or governor), while the other half is dedicated to religious purposes, primarily the temple and housing for monks. This division between administrative and religious functions reflects the idealized duality of power between the religious and administrative branches of government.
Punakha Dzong is distinctive in that it is sited on a relatively flat spit of land at the confluence of the Mo Chhu and Pho Chhu Rivers. The rivers surround the dzong on three sides, providing protection from attack. This siting proved inauspicious, however, when in 1994 a glacial lake 90 kilometers upstream burst through its Ice jam to cause a massive flood on the Pho Chhu, damaging the dzong and taking 23 lives.
Dzongs are built using corvée labor applied as a tax against each household in the district. Under this obligation each family provides or hires a decreed number of workers to work for several months at a time (during quiet periods in the agricultural year) in the construction of the dzong.
Dzongs comprise heavy masonry curtain walls surrounding one or more courtyards. The main functional spaces are usually arranged in two separate areas: the administrative offices; and the religious functions—including temples and monks' accommodation. This accommodation is arranged along the inside of the outer walls and often as a separate stone tower located centrally within the courtyard, housing the main temple, that can be used as an inner defensible citadel. The main internal structures are again built with stone (or as in domestic architecture by rammed clay blocks), and whitewashed inside and out, with a broad red ochre band at the top on the outside. The larger spaces such as the temple have massive internal timber columns and beams to create galleries around an open central full height area. Smaller structures are of elaborately carved and painted timber construction.
The roofs are massively constructed in hardwood and bamboo, highly decorated at the eaves, and are constructed traditionally without the use of nails. They are open at the eaves to provide a ventilated storage area. They were traditionally finished with timber Roof shingle weighted down with stones; but in almost all cases this has now been replaced with corrugated galvanised iron roofing. The roof of Tongsa Dzong, illustrated, is one of the few shingle roofs to survive and was being restored in 2006–07.
The courtyards, usually stone-flagged, are generally at a higher level than the outside and approached by massive staircases and narrow defensible entrances with large wooden doors. All doors have thresholds to discourage the entrance of spirits. Temples are usually set at a level above the courtyard with further staircases up to them.
In the United States, this style became known as Bhutanese Revival and Neo-Bhutanese Revival. The style was first introduced in America in 1917 by El Paso architect Charles Gibson using photographs from an article on Bhutan in the April 1914 issue of the National Geographic Magazine. Upon the suggestion of Kathleen Worrell, the wife of the dean of the State School of Mines and Metallurgy (today’s University of Texas at El Paso), Gibson’s initial designs appeared on the front page of El Paso newspapers. The governing board of the University of Texas System purchased the designs from Gibson and awarded them to the architectural firm of Trost & Trost. Henry Trost, assisted by the school’s faculty, completed the final designs of four Bhutanese Revival buildings at the school’s Paso del Norte campus.
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