Hassan Fathy

Hassan Fathy was born in Alexandria in 1900, to a Middle Class Upper Egyptian family.[3][4] He studied and trained as an architect in Egypt, graduating in 1926 from the King Fuad University (now Cairo University).[5] Fathy married once, to Aziza Hassanein, sister of Ahmed Hassanein. He was influenced by Upper Egyptian and simple rural architecture, he designed a villa with the southern style for his wife along the Nile in Maadi, which was later destroyed to make way for the new corniche. He also designed her brother's mausoleum (1947), along Salah Salem, in Neo-Mamluk style.

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 of that country.

The mosque at Kurna, Luxor by Hassan Fathy

Roof and dome of the mosque at Kourna seen from the minaret

Hassan Fathy was a cosmopolitan trilingual professor-engineer-architect, amateur musician, dramatist, and inventor. He designed nearly 160 separate projects, from modest country retreats to fully planned communities with police, fire, and medical services, markets, schools, theatres, and places for worship and recreation. These communities included many functional buildings such as laundry facilities, ovens, and wells. He utilized ancient design methods and materials, as well as knowledge of the rural Egyptian economic situation with a wide knowledge of ancient architectural and town design techniques. He trained local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their own buildings.

Early career / New Gourna

He began teaching at the College of Fine Arts in 1930 and designed his first adobe buildings in the late 1930s.

Fathy gained international critical acclaim for his involvement in the construction of New Gourna, located on Luxor's West Bank, built to resettle the village of Gourna, which fell within the archaeological areas of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.[6]

New Gourna Village - Craft's Exhibition- Section

Fathy's plan devised groundbreaking approaches to economic, social, and aesthetic issues that typically impact the construction of low-cost housing.

With regard to the economic issues, Fathy noted that structural steel was not an apt choice for a poor country, and that even materials such as cement, timber, and glass did not make good economic sense. To address this issue, Fathy instead devised a plan that included the use of appropriate technology, notably mud brick construction.

Noting that the traditional village, although afflicted with issues of overcrowding and poor sanitation was also an expression of “a living society in all its complexity,” Fathy strived to design New Gourna in a manner that addressed the social concerns, including attempting to consult directly with "every family in Gourna" and advocating for the involvement of social ethnographers in the planning process.[7] Despite this, inhabitants of the former village were not enthusiastic about relocating, which effectively cut them off from their existing livelihood of trading in archaeological finds.[8]

With regard to aesthetic issues, Fathy placed emphasis on traditional Nubian architectural designs which he observed in a 1941 trip to the region (enclosed courtyards; vaulted roofing), yielding what Fathy described as "spacious, lovely, clean, and harmonious houses." He also made use of traditional Nubian ornamental techniques (claustra, a form of mud latticework), as well as vernacular architecture techniques of the Gourna region. Some critics have observed, however, that Fathy's project for Gourna is not a superlative example of how to prioritize vernacular architecture in an urban plan, given that the domed architecture Fathy championed is traditionally used for funerary architecture rather than residential or domestic spaces[9]

Fathy has been called Egypt's best-known architect since Imhotep.

Fathy's New Gourna project was applauded in a popular British weekly in 1947 and soon after in a British professional journal;[17] further articles were published in Spanish, French and in Dutch. Later, Fathy would author a book on the New Gourna project, initially published by Cairo's Ministry of Culture in a limited edition in 1969, entitled Gourna: A Tale of Two Villages. In 1973 it was republished by the University of Chicago as Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt.[18]

A full appreciation of the importance of Fathy's contribution to world architecture became clear only as the twentieth century waned. Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions. Based on the structural massing of ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional courtyard forms to provide passive cooling.[19] Fathy is also renowned for having revived the traditional Nubian vault.[20]

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/37) with Hassan Fathy in 1986 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.[21]

Hassan Fathy made use of windcatchers and other passive cooling and passive ventilation methods from traditional architecture. He wrote a book on them.[22]

Fathy is featured in the documentary Il ne suffit pas que dieu soit avec les pauvres (1978) by Borhane Alaouié and Lotfi Thabet.[23]

• Laurie Baker
• Geoffrey Bawa
• Muzharul Islam
• Charles Correa
• Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil
• Nayyar Ali Dada

• Fathy, Hassan (1976) [1973]. Architecture for the Poor : An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226239163. OCLC 1020172729.
• Fathy, Hassan (1986). Shearer, Walter (ed.). Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture : Principles and Examples, With Reference to Hot Arid Climates. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226239170. OCLC 1036744049.
• Abdel-moniem El-Shorbagy, Hassan Fathy: The Power of Belief. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, 2017.
• Abdel-moniem El-Shorbagy, Hassan Fathy: The Language of Traditional Architecture. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, 2017.

• Curtis, Edward (2010). "Dar al-Islam community (New Mexico)". Encyclopedia of Muslim-American history. New York: Facts on File. p. 134. ISBN 9781438130408. OCLC 650849872.
• Fathy, Hassan (2008-11-21). "Dar al Islam Abiquiu Program Site". MIT Libraries. Retrieved 2019-10-23.
• Goldschmidt, Arthur (1999). Biographical dictionary of modern Egypt. Boulder, CO: L. Rienner. p. 56. ISBN 9781588269850. OCLC 841810840.
• Nobbs-Thiessen, Max (2008) [2006]. Contested representations and the building of modern Egypt : the architecture of Hassan Fathy (MA). Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada. ISBN 9780494294062. OCLC 471036139.
• Roth, Leland (1993). Understanding architecture : its elements, history, and meaning. New York, NY: Icon Editions. ISBN 9780064301589. OCLC 643834100.
• Schleifer, S. Abdullah (1984). "Hassan Fathy's Abiquiu: An Experimental Islamic Educational Center in Rural New Mexico". Ekistics. 51 (304): 56–60. ISSN 0013-2942. JSTOR 43620415. OCLC 5987894730.
• Steele, James (1997). An architecture for people : the complete works of Hassan Fathy. New York: Whitney Library of Design. ISBN 9780823002269. OCLC 9159872006.
• Stegers, Rudolf (2008). "Dar Al Islam Mosque". Sacred buildings : a design manual. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser. pp. 210–211. doi:10.1007/978-3-7643-8276-6_63. ISBN 9783764382766.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hassan Fathy.

• Fathy, Hassan. "The wind factor in air movement". Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture. (free fulltext)
• Digital collection of Hassan Fathy's architectural drawings
• Fathy's the Father of Sustainable Architecture in the Middle East
• Biography and images of Fathy's architecture
• Picture gallery from Hassan Fathy's project "New Baris" in Kharga Oasis, Egypt at Remains.se
• "A Hassan Fathy Quotation". solarhousehistory.com.