In Kuño Tambo, perched at 13,000 feet in Peru’s Andes Mountains, the mud-brick walls of the Church of Santiago Apóstol , built by the Spanish in 1681, have weathered their fair share of earthquakes.

But after more than three centuries of shaking, the church began the 21st century with eroding bricks, walls coming apart at the seams , missing buttresses and a tattered , leaking wooden roof. Murals on the interior walls were flaking off, and the free-standing bell tower across the village’s central plaza had acquired a crazed, Seussian cant. The church had become too unsafe to hold regular services, a blow to this staunchly Catholic town.

Kuño Tambo wasn’t alone. Strong earthquakes in 2007 and 2009 killed hundreds in Peru and ravaged scores of historic adobe structures. The danger to these buildings and the people living around them has motivated conservators and architects to explore methods to keep the buildings intact.

The Seismic Retrofitting Project, an initiative of the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute, is studying traditional practices for stabilizing structures in areas prone to earthquakes.