Home for him was a place to seek solace and comfort from the outside world.įinally, Hassan Fathy respected that nature should take precedence in the design of new structures. This not only reduced labor costs and created jobs, but also helped the villagers to connect with what Fathy considered a sacred space. He built thick brick walls and traditional courtyards, which both supported cultural values and created passive cooling (see design above), and enlisted the villagers as builders of their own homes. The villagers weren’t so excited about being displaced, but Fathy committed to smoothing their transition. In 1946 he was commissioned by Egypt’s Antiquities Department to build New Gourna Village for 3,000 families who were raiding the ruins at Luxor. He wrote “here, for years, for centuries, the peasant had been wisely and quietly exploiting the obvious building material, while we, with our modern school-learned ideas, never dreamed of using such a ludicrous substance as mud for so serious a creation as a house.”įathy cared more about improving the standard of living for the people he served than he did about fancy western materials and technology. While other architects were seeking fame and fortune, Hassan Fathy saw the genius of incorporating traditional design and building materials. In large towns capitalists are attracted by the returns from investment in housing, and public bArchitecture for the Poor (odies…frequently provide extensive accommodation for the citizens, but neither capitalists nor the state seem willing to undertake the provision of peasant houses…” This experience inspired him to improve the lives of those who were powerless to do so without help.įathy wrote in his book Architecture for the Poor (links to PDF): “They needed decent houses, but houses are expensive. The absolute squalor of the place “haunted” Fathy: the streets were littered with rotten food and filthy water, the buildings were dilapidated, and the peasants who lived there had accepted their depressing lot. One of his first assignments after graduating in 1926 from what is now the University of Cairo was to build a school at Talkha, a small town along the Nile in Northern Egypt. Hassan Fathy and Architecture for the Poor Fathy received several awards for his work, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1980, and founded The International Institute for Appropriate Technology in 1977. His impact can still be felt from Egypt to Greece and even New Mexico, where in 1981 he designed the Dar Ar-Salam community. Hassan Fathy was that voice.Įgyptian architect Hassan Fathy died in 1989 but left behind a legacy of 160 building projects ranging from small projects to large-scale communities complete with mosques and schools. What we really need is a compassionate and sensible voice, a voice that calls for affordable and authentic building practices. We have pounded our chests at the audacity of Masdar City’s “zero” footprint claim, and we have decried the potential consequences of unsustainable approaches to building and planning: $22 billion USD for a building project and “sustainable” simply don’t belong in the same sentence. Green Prophet has railed against projects like Dubai Burj Tower. Hassan Fathy, an Egyptian architect saw the value of natural building long before it became a fad in the west.
Based on the structural massing of ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional courtyard forms to provide passive cooling. Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions.
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