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Hassan Fathy and the New Gourna Experiment

© Alia F. Hasan

Hassan Fathy is one of the few names of 20th century architects in the Middle East that is also known in the West. He is, however, known as more than just an architect. He is the author of several books and articles on issues like building for the poor and sustainability. Because of his passion for those subjects, he can easily be called a humanitarian and perhaps even a visionary. His life-long career has been mainly devoted to an architecture that serves a greater good. Not only has his interest been in providing affordable housing for the poor but also in reinstilling pride in the vernacular and traditional architecture of the Arab world and mainly his home country of Egypt. Although his efforts have not always met with success, his philosophy has changed the architecture world of the 20th century. His ideas on sustainability, an architectural way to deal with our dangerous dependence on dwindling natural resources, will certainly hold importance in the next century.

New Gourna and Traditional Building Techniques

Fathy's ideas on the value of traditional architecture are most evident in his efforts at New Gourna Village near Luxor, Egypt. New Gourna was a peasant village very near to the famous archaeological digs of Luxor and had to be relocated as a result. The village, built from 1946-53, was a reaction to the architect's realization that the concrete-frame housing schemes imported from Europe for the rural poor were not working. They were not only too costly but did not accomodate to the cultural differences between Europe and the Middle East. Hassan Fathy offered the low cost, locally and traditionally built structures at New Gourna as the alternative. They were a sort of social/architectural experiment for him, one he would write about 20 years later in Architecture for the Poor, an Experiment in Rural Egypt. Part of his goal was to not just prove he could build houses cheaper than the supposedly advanced Europeans could, but to solve a much deeper social problem by having the poor villagers build houses themselves, thereby becoming completely self-sufficient. To achieve this he himself trained the locals in the Nubian tradition of mud brick construction. The homes were composed almost entirely of mud brick steps, walls, vaults, and domes.

The Lesson of New Gourna

Although these structures were well suited to the climate and customs of the region, this type of building was not able to be revived in Egypt to any large degree. Industrialization had taken its effect on the Third World for better or worse, which meant that what was modern was what the Western world was creating. Just as the West had ignored the value of the cultures it had subordinated during imperialist rule, native thinkers in those same countries ignored the power and appeal of Industrialization and what it offered people.Fathy's experiment at New Gourna failed not because it was not a valid experiment or because it had nothing to offer but because his philosophy underestimated the force it was up against. His ideas on the value of tradition and nationality were reasonable and well intentioned, but powerless.

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