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Descendants

 

Hassan Fathy’s Followers 

Dedication

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To my wife, five children, and extended family

Contents

 Acknowledgment

Introduction

 

Chapter 1 Traditional Forms, Materials, and Methods of Construction

Chapter 2 Urban Planning Approach

Chapter 3 Principles of Architecture: Modernity and Tradition

Chapter 4 The Formalists: The Copiers of Forms

 

Conclusion

Appendix 1 Chronology of Fathy’s Life and Career

Appendix 2 Awards, Affiliations

Conference sand Competitions

Appendix 3 Glossary

 

Images Credit

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

 

 

 

 

 

 

I owe more than mere thanks can express to my dear wife Mervat El-shafie, who had to listen patiently to endless discussions on Hassan Fathy – thank you for your love, insight, and faith. 

Introduction

The late Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) devoted all his career-life for solving the problem of housing the poor, specifically in developing countries and rural environments. His primary aim was to improve the living conditions of the poor by training them on using their local building materials in constructing their dwellings. Through his designs and his writings, Fathy influenced a younger generation of architects in Egypt and worldwide. His ideas and philosophy opened opportunities and became a source of inspiration for architects to recognize and appreciate their traditional architecture. The response to Fathy’s approach from architects in the Developing World differed from that of Western architects. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, most of the Developing World’s countries, especially Muslim nations, were obtaining their independence after a long period of colonization. As a result of the uncertainties created by the introduction of modernism, architects began to search for national identity. When Fathy’s architecture began to be widely known from the 1970s onward, these architects were influenced by his works, not only because of their links to the vernacular, but also because of their associations with Islamic architecture.

 

The common response of these architects to Fathy’s architecture was that they regarded his buildings as prototypes for the contemporary Islamic architecture of the Middle East as his traditional forms and techniques epitomize their national and regional features. Fariborz Atapour argued that Fathy was vital in motivating architects to appreciate the God-given values of the past. He also believed that Fathy showed Muslim architects how to preserve the monuments of their ancient civilizations, as well as “to fulfill that yearning for harmony and beauty” which represents the essence of their Islamic culture, and “which neither the conquerors of the East nor of the West have been able to destroy”. Like Atapour, Hassan-Uddin Khan argues that Fathy “is a reminder to us… that what is valuable is looking at our own places and at who we are… But we need to look at him with our eyes open”.

 

On the other hand, the response of Western architects to Fathy’s architecture and ideas varied. While some architects admired the new possibilities of building domes and vaults with a primitive material such as mud, others were inspired by Fathy’s philosophy and his humanistic approach. Mimi Lobell argues that Fathy’s experiments in New Gourna “show us by example, what architecture should be for us all. We all have a right to expect the buildings we live in to respond to all aspects of our humanness, not just functional ones”. Like Lobell, Labelle Prussin of the University of Washington believes that the knowledge and experience gained from Fathy’s experiment in New Gourna “provide new hope and new inspiration for those of us who tried, and the ideas which New Gourna generated will someday mature and flower.” However, the response of western and non-western architects to Fathy’s approach centers around four main issues. These are the use of traditional forms (dome, vault), materials and methods of construction, Fathy’s approach to urban planning, the principles that guide Fathy’s architecture, and the formalist response to Fathy’s works.

Chapter 1

Traditional Forms, Materials, and Methods of Construction

 

The significant impact of Fathy’s approach of employing traditional forms, materials, and method of construction was to come, first, through the early work of El-Wakil, who was described by Prince Charles as one of Fathy’s “most gifted students.” Throughout his life, El-Wakil remained dedicated to the course of vernacular architecture and traditional building techniques. Like his mentor, El-Wakil believed that “it is the role of art, and above all of the architecture, to safeguard the environment in which the tradition can survive.” El-Wakil’s Halawa house (1972-1975) in Al-Agamy, near Alexandria, exhibited the architect’s awareness of the traditional building forms such as dome, vault, loggia, malqaf and mashrabiyyahs as well as the traditional building techniques (fig. 1). El-Wakil also employed Fathy’s team of craftsmen, including the master-mason, Aladdin Mustafa, who executed most of Fathy’s work. Like Fathy, El-Wakil recognized the importance of the craftsmen in the process of the construction and acknowledged his collaboration with master mason Mustafa. El-Wakil argued that architecture is a collective art that has its vocabulary and that his work with Mustafa was an opportunity to learn this language. “The poverty of modern architecture is in large part due to the fact that architects believe they can do all the detailing without a sound knowledge of techniques and materials.” For El-Wakil, the Halawa house was “a long-awaited opportunity to realize the study and research [he] was undertaking in vernacular architecture.” In 1980, El-Wakil’s Halawa house received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

 

 

Fig. 1. Ha1awa house, Al-Agamy, near Alexandria, (1972-1975), by Abdel Wahid E1-Wakil.

 

Like Fathy, El-Wakil’s traditional approach has also begun to flourish in mosque architecture, but he was more successful than Fathy and built more than eleven mosques in Saudi Arabia. Of note, the Corniche mosque, Jeddah, built in 1986, demonstrates the extent of Fathy’s influence on El-Wakil (fig. 2). Although built in Saudi Arabia, El-Wakil combined elements of Islamic architecture and the Egyptian vernacular. The Corniche mosque featured traditional forms such as the squinched-dome and the vault. El-Wakil also used local materials as well as employing the traditional method of construction, which he learned from Fathy. Although the Corniche mosque is a small-scale building, the way its elements are tied together and the form of its minaret take “the concept of the minimal mosque to the absolute limit.” Chris Abel believes that the mosque externally and internally “possesses a three-dimensional quality and authority that belies its minute size.”

 

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Cover: "Hasan Al-Fathy theatre" by Andrea Kirkby is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 26.06.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-4741-3

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