Hassan Fathy, who was born in Alexandria in 1900 and died in Cairo in 1989, is Egypt's best known architect since Imhotep. In the course of a long career with a crescendo of acclaim sustaining his later decades, the cosmopolitan trilingual professor-engineer-architect, amateur musician, dramatist, and inventor, designed nearly 160 separate projects, from modest country retreats to fully planned communities with police, fire, and medical services, with markets, schools and theatres, with places for worship and others for recreation, including many, like laundry facilities, ovens, and wells that planners less attuned to sociability might call workstations.
Although the importance of Fathy's contribution to world architecture became clear only as the twentieth century waned, his contribution to Egypt was obvious decades before, at least to outside observers. As early as halfway through his three building seasons at New Gourna (a town for the resettlement of tomb robbers, designed for beauty and built with mud) the project was being admired abroad. In March 1947 it was applauded in a popular British weekly, half a year later in a British professional journal, and praise from Spanish professionals followed the next year. A year of silence (1949, when Fathy published a literary fable) was followed by attention in one French[citation needed] and two Dutch periodicals,[citation needed] one of which made it the lead story.
Fathy's next major engagement, designing and supervising school construction for Egypt's Ministry of Education, further extended his leave from the College of Fine Arts, where he had begun teaching in 1930. In 1953 he returned, heading the architecture section the next year. In 1957, frustrated with bureaucracy and convinced that buildings would speak louder than words, he moved to Athens to collaborate with international planners evolving the principles of ekistical design under the direction of Constantinos Doxiadis. He served as the advocate of traditional natural-energy solutions in major community projects for Iraq and Pakistan and undertook, under related auspices, extended travel and research for "Cities of the Future" program in Africa.[citation needed]
Returning to Cairo in 1963, he moved to Darb al-Labbana, near the Citadel, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life in the intervals between speaking and consulting engagements. As a man with a riveting message in an era searching for alternatives, in fuel, in personal interactions, in economic supports, he moved from his first major international appearance at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston in 1969, to multiple trips per year as a leading critical member of the architectural profession. His book on Gourna, published in a limited edition in 1969, became even more influential in 1973 with its new English title Architecture for the Poor. His professional mission increasingly took him abroad. His participation in the U.N. Habitat conference in 1976 in Vancouver was followed shortly by two events that significantly shaped the rest of his activities: he began to serve on the steering committee for the nascent Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and he founded and set guiding principles for his Institute of Appropriate Technology. In 1980, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Architecture and Urban Planning and the Right Livelihood Award.
Briefly married to Aziza Hassanein, he left no direct descendants, but the children of his five brothers and sisters, aware of the obligation to preserve the heritage of their uncle tried to make sure that the materials transmitting his ideals and his art will remain available in Egypt, for the future benefit that country.
I am a retired architect who is mostly estranged from the mythologies of the profession as they are so ritualistically observed by its devout practitioners here in North America. After 40 years of practice, I see little to admire in the profession in the 20th century, and so far, the 21st century.
However, there are a very few very remarkable exceptions to that general rule. The late Hassan Fathy is certainly one of those beacons shining through the darkness of 20th century architectural conceits.
Hassan Fathy was an Egyptian architect who produced most all of his work for construction in adobe, that almost timeless material that can be dated back more than 10,000 years in the Old World and very likely as well in the New World.
For the uninitiated, adobe is a building material made from mud sometimes mixed with organic materials such as straw and then dried in the sun until hard enough to use for the construction of houses, churches, temples, food warehouses, etc.,etc. Adobe is the traditional building material of Egypt for those who are not pharaohs, the wealthy, the colonialists, Governments, nor large corporations. Adobe has always been the material for the common folks. Adobe is also the traditional building material of New Mexico, my home now.
American and European architects are 鈥渞evered鈥� at best. Some like to perceive themselves as worshiped. I know of none who are loved by the everyday people.
I am only an American, whose knowledge of the Muslim world is very limited. But I have known, and do know, a small number of Muslim people. But I have yet to meet a Muslim, from any country, who not only knows of Hassan Fathy, but also who does not love his work鈥攆rom their hearts. This is not a response to an architect's work that I am accustomed to seeing.
This book, "The Architecture for the Poor", is the true history of an Egyptian village that stood in the path of Lake Nasser, created by the Aswan High Dam, built in the mid 20th century along the Nile River at President Abdel Nasser鈥檚 behest, using large amount of money from the Soviet Union. This was a major project of the Cold War; and a very, very large political project for Egyptian President Nasser.
This traditional Egyptian adobe village, Gourna or Al Gourna, was scheduled to be evacuated and re-built, at Government expense, along with a good number of other traditional Egyptian villages before the waters of Lake Nasser drowned them permanently. The villagers were to be re-housed in Soviet-styled "modern" housing. For an American to understand Soviet-styled housing, think American urban "Public Housing Projects" of the mid-50's.
A number of these villagers and the architect Hassan Fathy approached the Egyptian Government and requested to know the budget of the Housing Project for their village. They were, amazingly, told the amount.
So Hassan Fathey, along with the villagers, designed a new village to be built completely out of the adobe mud at the proposed village site, to be made by the villagers, and the entire new village to be built along traditional village planning principles, established by the villagers themselves. This new village(town actually in modern terms of size) was to be built by the labor of the villagers themselves. No wood or modern materials were to be used, other than sanitary running water. All roofs and second floor construction was to be done with traditional adobe dome and barrel-vault construction.
Hassan Fathey used his experience to develop a new budget, figuring in the lower costs of villager-donated labor into their own homes as well as local traditional materials. Even with generous cost-overun estimates, the new budget was significantly less that the cost of the originally planned Soviet concrete Housing Project nightmares.
The now-impressed Egyptian Government allocated the money; and the villagers built themselves a new adobe village, mostly as designed by Hassan Fathy and the villagers themselves.
The village is a jewel in the desert. The villagers built themselves their own village paradise.
It features, private courtyards, numerous shaded public arcades and plazas, and all the features of a centuries-old traditional Egyptian village. Photos are included in the book. This all occurred in the 1950's, I think.
This book helped establish my own architectural predisposition--out of sync with mainstream North America. For better or for worse.
As a postscript, I would like to say that I have been blessed to have actually met Dr. Hassan Fathy in 1982 and shake his hand.
This man made me love my career, this was one of the very first books I read about architecture and it took my soul and mind to higher levels, the man is a genius.
I think a lot of people have a misconception about what this book is all about. It isn't just about rural Egypt or Gourna, yes he's used it as an example, but that was it. This idea of earth houses was his concern mostly; the idea of being able to build a decent home for the poor, that looks as beautiful and comfortable as other members in the society.
The most irritating part about the content is that it's not being supported enough. Other people who have opposing ideas aren't really letting Dr. Hassan Fathy prove to them that his idea is worth it. Even when he does build a beauty, he still had this blindly opposing party nagging about his concept. It is saddening because up to today no one's paying attention to the poor's housing! no one's giving them the houses they deserve. Everyone no matter what their social status is, has the right to live in a comfortable and decent home.
This isn't just a theoretical book, Dr Hassan Fathy, states all the the costs and all the building techniques and strategies used in his buildings in Al Gourna. he even included a whole chapter that is only dedicated for illustrations from plans, sections, elevations to pictures of the built projects.
I was very inspired and moved by this book, as earth architecture is one of my main interests in architecture nowadays. Going back to this for sure, although some techniques are outdated, they still can be integrated somehow.
This is an important book on the theory and practice of housing for people living below the moneyed economy in all countries. My father worked with the author in the early 1950's and as part of the US Point 4 (AID) program in Egypt helped fund New Gourna; a wonderful sophisticated example of Fathy's philosophy built.
Bureaucracy vs. Peasant! That was the conflict Hassan Fathy faced during his experiment in rural Egypt while trying to rehouse the poor people of Gourna. Fathy is a genius who tried to improve the Egyptian rural life by uplifting the peasant's residence at a time when they were treated inhumanely by their own masters and landlords. His teachings called for a revolution in housing by going back to nature and making use of the peasant's environment and taking mud as a fruitful source for building material and thus eliminating any alien or artificial material that might invade the poor peasant's bubble. He also introduced in his case study the concept of cooperative building or cooperative labor, as well as reviving local crafts and promoting them as a main source of income. Faced by bureaucrats and authorities who didn't care a bit about the peasant and delayed the building process as hard as they could and the unwillingness to offer help from the Gournis themselves, the project met a dead end. However, Fathy laid the foundations for further generations to learn from his methods and take reference in the Gourna project as a model for self sufficient, cooperative, rural village. What really impresses me throughout Fathy's experiment, is that he didn't involve himself in the project from an architect's technical or economic perception, but rather from a humane perception. He built socially and culturally for the humans to live there. It's sad he realised at the end that he wasn't meant to work in Egypt if he wanted to implement his concepts. However, more than sixty years after the Gourna experiment, Hassan Fathy's methods are still alive between us, and he proved a lot of architects, bureaucrats, and authorities wrong, and his buildings are still standing still as a witness of his greatness and foresight. He was a man with a vision. And this book is an honest proof of that, he stated the failures before the victories and acted as a just judge for himself.
Totally fascinating. I think the part that's going to remain my favorite is the lesson in how to build arches and domes with mud brick (and I'm sort of trying to convince my dad to build a pizza oven in the backyard so I can try it out).
The parts detailing the trouble Fathy had with bureaucracy were also instructive, if wince-worthy. I wonder to what degree his detractors would disagree with his perspective---but he does a good job of laying out the details, so I'm inclined to think his version of events is accurate.
You might not expect a book about radical city planning/architecture in Egypt in the 1960s to be interesting, but it is. I'm not sure I can put it any other way.
Teach a man to fish! Or in this case, to build his own house. Fathy's case is perhaps even more relevant today, with millions living in precarious housing and a carbon-heavy construction sector. This volume is more than just an account of his New Gourna housing project, but contains loads of meditations on architecture as and material culture. Writing just after the Second World War, most Egyptian architects clustered around Cairo and catered to rich patrons. Those who attempted to help the poor did so under the auspices of the massive housing projects reliant on imported materials and devoid of aesthetic considerations. Fathy's solution was to return to the tried-and-true mud brick method used in Egypt for millennia, training the locals themselves to build their houses cooperatively and learn handicrafts like weaving and pottery to achieve self sufficiency. While this may not be quite as easy given the clustering of poverty in urban peripheries rather than the countryside in recent decades, New Gourna provides an inspiring test case at alleviating poverty and homelessness--on a tight budget. Who knows? Population dispersals away from the city have happene numerous times in the face of collapse, and while Fathy's philosophy may not have had a fair hearing in times of global economic growth, it just may prove exactly what the doctor ordered for an epoch of austerity and collapse.
This is a very important book for the young would-be architect because lays out the moral groundwork for why architecture is important and how its role is pivotal to the community and the culture. Hassan Fathy was a great architect who identified the tradition and showed why it works. The book covers the cultural aspects of building and living and the engineering principles employed. It reveals how skills based in tradition can be used to create a building that meets all today's tests of sustainability and passive heating and cooling, even in the demanding Egyptian climate.
A must have for ppl working in the construction/ housing communities ... he's such a visionary i think the countryside in Egypt would've looked way better and more functional have stayed and just for the recored right now a huge re-location project is being done in Qorna - again - costing millions only one thing to say 丨爻亘賶 丕賱賱賴 賵 賳毓賲 丕賱賵賰賷賱
Condescending doesn't start to explain it! A visit to the project in 2013 did nothing but affirm my beliefs... How he wrote the book.. how he describes the 'peasants'
鈥淎s it happened, I had recently had an adventure with two thieves who had broken into my house and stabbed me, yet this is no exaggeration to say that I felt safer with these thieves than with officials who could lie to prevent a benefit from reaching the peasants鈥�
Fathy speaks for himself.
This book actually had the plot twist of all time. His description of the principles of mud-brick vaulting for peasant housing were so inspiring and energizing, that it broke my entire heart when he suddenly said
鈥淏ut the Gourna experiment failed. The village was never finished, and it is not to this day a flourishing village community鈥�
A thousand curses to bureaucratic obstruction !!!
At least many beautiful buildings were made in spite of the sabotage. I鈥檓 off to Wikipedia now to see what happened during the rest of Fathy鈥檚 career.
such a lovely book, reading this work of fathy felt like reading his personal diaries, fathy writes with the honesty of simone weil or montaigne, his prose is lucid and thoroughly enjoyable, a book i learned immensely from, both in terms of aesthetics as much as in terms of what the french moralists wrote about. truly an unique work, i will spent more time documenting his life.