Hassan Fathy

Hassan Fathy (23 March 1900 - 30 November 1989) was an Egyptian architect who argued that earth, the cheapest material available to rural Egyptians, could provide durable, comfortable roofs without steel, cement or imported timber. His revival of the Nubian vault and dome made him one of the best-known advocates of vernacular building in the 20th century.

Life

Fathy was born in Alexandria and graduated in 1926 from King Fuad University (now Cairo University). He began teaching at the College of Fine Arts in 1930. He died at his home in Cairo in 1989.

Roofs without timber

Fathy aimed to replace Western materials such as steel, cement and glass with mud brick. For roofs he turned to the Nubian tradition of the southern Nile, where masons built barrel vaults and domes of mud brick without any formwork, laying inclined courses against an end wall (see Nubian vault). He combined vaults and domes with dense brick walls, courtyards and windcatchers for passive cooling.

New Gourna

His best-known project, New Gourna on the west bank at Luxor, was built between 1946 and 1952 to rehouse residents of Old Gourna, whose houses stood over the Theban tombs. The village used local earth as its main material, with Nubian-inspired vaulted roofs and enclosed courtyards. Fathy later called the "Gourna Experiment" a failure: many intended residents did not move in, and roughly 40% of the original buildings had been lost by the time the site was placed on the 2010 World Monuments Watch. UNESCO began a safeguarding project for the village in 2009 (see New Gourna).

Writing and other work

His account of the project, Gourna: A Tale of Two Villages, was published in a limited edition by Egypt's Ministry of Culture in 1969 and republished by the University of Chicago Press in 1973 as Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt. His Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture (1986) deals with passive cooling and windcatchers. He also designed the adobe mosque and madrasa of Dar al-Islam near Abiquiu, New Mexico, completed in 1981.

Recognition

Fathy received the Aga Khan Chairman's Award for Architecture, the Right Livelihood Award and the Balzan Prize, all in 1980. The Nubian vault he championed has, since 2000, also been promoted for housing in the Sahel (see Nubian vault).