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Fathy trained as an architect in Egypt, graduating in 1926 from the University of King Fuad I (now the University of Cairo). He designed his first mud brick buildings in the late 1930s. He held several government positions and was appointed head of the Architectural Section of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, in 1954. Fathy was recognized with the Aga Khan Award For Architecture in 1980. Fathy utilized ancient design methods and materials. He integrated a 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. 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. OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE 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 and two Dutch periodicals, 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 Constantine 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 a " Cities Of The Future " program in Africa . Returning to , and he founded and set guiding principles for his Institute Of Appropriate Technology . 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 an uncle of such imposing stature, have taken pains to ensure that the materials transmitting his ideals and his art will remain available in Egypt , for the future benefit of the country for which he cared so deeply. SOURCES Hassan Fathy. Architecture for the Poor : An Experiment in Rural Egypt. University of Chicago Press, March 1976. ISBN 0226239160 Hassan Fathy, Walter Shearer (Editor). Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture : Principles and Examples, With Reference to Hot Arid Climates. University of Chicago Press, September 1986. ISBN 0226239179 James Steele. An Architecture for People : The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy. Whitney Library of Design, October 1997. ISBN 0823002268 EXTERNAL LINKS |
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