Hassan Fathy: An Architectural Life

by Leila El-Wakil (Editor)

This fully illustrated volume represents the most comprehensive examination yet of the life and work of the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900–89), and the regional and international significance of his contribution to the lived environment. Eleven Egyptian and international scholars reveal the man, his milieu, his goals and his passions, his concept of social living and his fight for a humane model for affordable housing in tune with the environment, the application of these concepts in his numerous plans and buildings, his relations with the establishment, the extent of his influence, and the lasting legacy of his completed projects. Generously illustrated with archival and color photographs and the architect’s own distinctive and beautifully decorated gouache plans and elevations, many never previously published. Leila el-Wakil, Camille Abele, Jo Abram, Rémi Baudou, Ahmad Hamid, Nadia Radwan, Samir Radwan, Ola Seif, Jessica Stevens-Campos, Mercedes Volait, Nicholas Warner.

412 pages, Hardcover

Published October 2, 2018

Reviews

[Francis R]

Hassan Fathy deserves to be better known in America. A socially conscious architect, he promoted the use of indigenous materials for buildings of modern design for people of modest means in his native Egypt. He was ahead of his time in promoting the use of renewable energy to bring electricity and other basic amenities to low income populations. Leila El-Wakil has long been interested in the work of Fathy in Egypt and has done much to urge the restoration and preservation of his works there, especially the village of New Gourna near the site of the ancient temples at Luxor. The evocative juxtaposition of antique grandeur and locally informed modernism that one encounters there makes New Gourna one of the most interesting, but under appreciated, instances of architecture in all of Egypt. The collection of essays that Leila el-Wakil has assembled does a good job of illuminating the ecological ideals, Arab traditions, and simple beauty that shaped the work of this original designer who ranked with Paolo Soleri and Buckminster Fuller as a utopian visionary of the 20th century.