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Hasan Fathi(1900-89). Architect who championed traditional

peasant designs. Born in Alexandria to a rich landowning family, he studied architecture at Cairo University, receiving his license in 1926. Although trained in the Parisbeaux arts tradition, upon visiting his family's Upper Egyptian estates for the first time in 1927, he was struck by the simplicity and rightness of the local building traditions and dedicated

himself to making their principles more systematic and better suited to the housing needs of other poor people. Meanwhile, he worked in the architectural section of Cairo's municipal affairs department, but later went into private practice. In 1940 he got his first chance to test his ideas when the Royal Agriculture Society asked him to design an experimental farm at Bahtim. He investigated and revived Nubian techniques

of building arches and domes with mud brick and also used these techniques in the construction of some private homes.



Fathi's main achievement was the design and construction, begun in 1945 and only partly implemented, of the village of New Qurna (Gourna, in Qina province, is opposite Luxor), about which he wrote a book in 1969 called Gourna, a Tale of Two Villages, which was republished in 1973 as Architecture for the Poor. He argued that the collective wisdom of a community about its use of space should guide architectural design and town planning. He also served as director of school buildings for the education ministry in 1949-52, head of the architecture department of the Fine Arts faculty at Cairo University from 1953 to 1957, and a member of the United

Nations Committee for Housing in South Arabia. An outstanding teacher, Fathi drew young architects and students from many parts of the world to Egypt to learn his techniques.



From Bob Johnston's and my Historical Dictionary of Egypt (3rd ed.; Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003).



Arthur Goldschmidt